Tetiana Stanieva

Ukrainian director, producer, journalist, social and cultural activist of Bulgarian descent.

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She was born on August 11, 1984, in the Bulgarian village of Chushmelii (Krynychne) which is located in the Bolhrad district of the Odesa region. Her place of birth determined her fate.

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In 2001, she successfully graduated from Krynychne Secondary School (Krynychne Lyceum now).

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From 2002-2005, she studied theology at Kyiv Christian University. Since 2006, she has studied at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, specializing in Folklore Studies and Philology of Ukrainian Language and Literature, and graduated with honors in 2013. The choice of this path was dictated by the desire to go deeper into the traditions of her land, to study, understand and preserve them.

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In addition, in 2019-2022, she graduated from the Izmail State University of Humanities with a specialization in English Language and Literature.

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From 2011 until 2018, she worked at the consular and cultural department of the Embassy of Palestine in Ukraine. She has experience in negotiations, public speaking, and presentations, and is proficient in public speaking.

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In 2019-2020, she managed cultural projects at the NGO Center for Development of Bessarabia. Among the largest of them were the VI International Rock Festival Danube Sich in Izmail (June 2019) and the International Folk Festival Bessarabia Folk in Chishiy (Horodne) (May 2019—offline; May 2020—online).

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In addition, Tetiana was responsible for organizing cultural exchange events between Ukrainian cities and other countries. For example, in February 2019, under her supervision, the Krynychne dance group Chesma-Varuita took part in the International Folklore Festival in Vienna. And in August 2019, a Ukrainian delegation of more than 100 people participated in the Rozhen National Folklore Fair in Bulgaria.      

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On June 4, 2020, she founded the NGO OKO—Association of Creative Personalities. Since then, she has been the director of this organization.

In 2020, she organized the First International Ethnographic Film Festival OKO online, based on the NGO OKO. It was held with the support of the Ukrainian State Film Agency, MEGOGO, and the Spilnokosht crowdfunding project.

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The second edition of the film festival took place in September 2021 in Bolhrad, also with the support of the Ukrainian State Film Agency, Odesa Regional Council, MEGOGO, Ferry Complex Orlivka LTD, and others.

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The third edition was held in Toruń (Poland) within the framework and with the support of the Camerimage—International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography. Also, the grant program Aid for Development from the Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria in Ukraine and a string of other sponsors. 

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Tetiana's film career began in 2018 when she presented her debut feature-length documentary about her native village of Krynychne (Chushmelii), Place of Power  (103 minutes), in which she was a producer, screenwriter, and director. The film was screened in Ukraine (Kyiv, Odesa, Izmail, Zaporizhzhia, and Krynychne village) and at several festivals in Bulgaria, Italy, and the Czech Republic.  

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In 2019, she completed work on the script for her feature film, an adventure comedy called Cunning Peter. The film is currently in pre-production.

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In September 2020, the documentary short film Chamur  (28 minutes) was released. The work won two awards in America and Canada as the best documentary at international film festivals. In addition, the film was selected as part of the film program of festivals in France, Israel, Italy, and Cyprus.

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Tetiana's filmography also includes the feature-length documentary Easter Reconstruction  (100 minutes), which she directed and produced. This work was shown at the auto-premiere in Odesa on April 30, 2021, and was also broadcast on Odesa's Channel 7 and other regional TV channels on Easter of the same year.  

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She was the producer and director of a series of 12 documentaries called Disappearing Villages (each episode is 26 minutes long) as well. The project was released in 2021 as a result of Tetiana's victory in a creative competition and was commissioned by the Ukrainian public broadcaster UA: Suspilne.

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Tetiana also became a producer at the Power Film Production studio, providing video production and support for various creative projects since 2018.

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Since February 24, 2022, she has been a foreign correspondent for the Bulgarian TV channel bTV, covering the war in Ukraine in live broadcasts and stories.

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In the midst of Russian military aggression in 2022, she became the leader of the movement of Ukrainian Bulgarians against Russian propaganda in her small homeland and Bulgaria.

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Since the summer of 2022, she has been working on the feature-length documentary film She (a diary of the lives of military wives). The filming process will last until the end of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

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She also devotes time to working in SMM: she administers the Facebook pages of 5 projects, manages their PR services, and writes articles for the media. She has a personal Facebook page with over 10 thousand followers.

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Links to her works:
https://megogo.net/ru/view/11068295-mesto-sily.html
https://megogo.net/ru/view/14417725-chamur.html?video_view_tab=description
https://youtu.be/yQ_Kgwk_Wt0 
https://suspilne.media/amp/277492-na-pivdni-odesini-znimaut-film-pro-druzin-vijskovih-final-akogo-zalezit-vid-zsu/?fbclid=IwAR3W-pEzMPHPtc63LXmiwPLLGfQyGFLwaKyPOimwqCU4lGKXd474WjEOVqo