Ioanina Pavel

Unlike many creatives in continental Europe, Ioanina got into producing not from a love

of arthouse cinema, but an obsession with TV series. She has never stopped watching

shows and considers it an absolute privilege that she gets to make them now too.

While in her sophomore year at Pol Sci, Ioanina started working in series development

for Media ProPictures. Later on, she also dipped her toe into marketing, while

moonlighting at HBO as a translator, getting Romanian scripts into English for HBO’s UK

commissioners. When a position opened up, she dropped everything to learn the ropes

of production.

As head of HBO’s Original Production Department in Romania, Ioanina built up a

healthy slate and creative-produced local dramas, docu-series and reality series –

among them bubbly rom-com RUXX, hybrid shiny-floor and house-reality series One

True Singer, and taut spy thriller Spy/Master, which world-premiered in competition at

the 2023 Berlinale and aired on BBC4 in May 2024.

In May 2023, the month after HBO shut down its production arm in the region, Ioanina

co-founded prod-co May One with Johnathan Young, formerly HBO’s VP Original

Production in CE. May One’s first commission, SUBTERAN, a 6-part thriller for Netflix,

premiered in January 2025 and placed in the top 10 across 69 countries.