Maria Douza

Maria Douza studied Byzantine History and Medieval Greek Literature before joining the National Film and Television School of England to study film direction. During her studies she wrote and directed many short and medium length films (the awarded "The Bridge" 30' and "The Island" 50' among them). Coming back to Greece she started directing Commercials and Social Awareness Spots for production companies Stefi and Kino. Included in her work are the awarded Government Commercials for the Euro-Elections and the General Elections in Greece, as well as Social Awareness Spots about domestic violence and energy saving. At the same time, she directed a few documentaries (social, ethnographic, cultural) like "The Making of Free Diving", "Family Feast", "The Agas Trial", and "In The Writer's Workshop". Since 2003 Maria has been writing feature length scripts, developed through the MFI Workshops. Her first script "The Tree and The Swing" was produced in 2013 as a Greek-Serbian co-production with Mirjanna Karanovic and Myrto Alikaki in the leading roles. Renamed "A Place Called Home" the film enjoyed worldwide presentation in over thirty festivals and won several awards: the Astron Best Feature Film Award (San Francisco Greek Film Festival), Best Feature and Best Screenplay (Cyprus International Film Festival) and the Best of European Union Film Festival Award in Toronto. Released in Greece 2014 by StraDa Films the film is represented internationally by EastWest Filmdistribution Gmbh. [http://www.eastwestdistribution.com/film/a_place_called_home/]. In 2016, Maria directed a 52'.00'' drama-documentary for French Canal+ series 'Mythical Cinemas', about the historical open air "Thission Cinema" in Athens, on a screenplay by Ersi Sotiropoulos, (co-produced by Kolam, France and Steficon, Greece). The film is currently (2017) showing on Cine+ France and will subsequently be broadcast to all the countries participating in the series. Next, Maria will direct "A Bag of Hair", based on a novel by Pantelis Kaliotsos. The project has received Media funding and is looking for co-production in Europe. Other scripts include, "Beautiful City", a story about the transformation of women in Post War Greece in parallel to the metamorphosis of the urban landscape, and "Trapped", a political allegory on contemporary Greece. From 2008 to 2010, Maria worked as film consultant on European Research project ANSWER developing a notation system for the film language (Director Notation). In 2010, she designed and founded www.europeanscripts.net, an internet platform for presentation and promotion of screenplays in Europe.