Ivana Mladenovic

Ivana Mladenovic was born in Serbia. After studying Law in Belgrade, she moved to Bucharest, Romania where she graduated in Film Directing at the National School of Film and Theatre (UNATC) in 2010. In 2011 she finished her MA studies in Film Directing at the same university. Her short student films were shown at various film festivals around the world. She started working on her first feature documentary, Turn Off the Lights (2012), in 2009 and finished it after three years of work. The film follows three young ex-convicts after their release from prison. The documentary was developed in the acting workshops organized in the Jilava prison by director Florin Serban who invited her to join the project. "Turn Off The Lights" premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2012 and later won the Heart of Sarajevo Award for Best Documentary and the Gopo Award for Best Romanian Documentary. She appeared as an actress in Radu Jude's acclaimed feature film Scarred Hearts (2016).