Ioan­ina Pavel

Ioan­ina Pavel is a bud­ding writer, cre­at­ive pro­du­cer and, along­side Johnath­an Young, co-founder of prod-co May One. She pro­duced the NET­FLIX ori­gin­al show SUB­TER­AN which premiered in Janu­ary 2025 at no 1 in Romania and no 6 world­wide and is con­sidered to be the most suc­cess­ful Romani­an title internationally.

Ioan­ina came to writ­ing after years of trans­lat­ing writers’ scripts into Eng­lish for HBO Romania, even­tu­ally mov­ing into pro­du­cing as its Head of Ori­gin­als. Ioan­ina developed and pro­duced series across vari­ous genres and she was a devel­op­ment exec­ut­ive on Romani­an-Ger­man cyber thrill­er HACK­ERVILLE, which won a Grimme-Pre­is (Grimme Award) in 2019. Some of her later cre­at­ive pro­du­cer cred­its include queer rom-com RUXX and shiny floor-cum-house real­ity show ONE TRUE SING­ER. She did some of her best work on Romani­an-Ger­man spy thrill­er SPY/MASTER which was nom­in­ated at the 2023 Berlinale.

Ioan­ina is cur­rently writ­ing three co-pro pro­jects for May One that touch on cul­ture clashes in Europe, migra­tion and female empower­ment. She is a series binger and her guid­ing prin­ciple in seri­al storytelling is: be ori­gin­al, go against the grain, but nev­er against the audience.