Biography
Dina Shturmanova was born and raised in Ukraine, where she obtained her first degree - in Law - But in 2002 she immigrated to the United States and lived in New York for many years.
Sometime later, in 2007, she was accepted to attend the oldest film school in the world - VGIK (Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography) in Moscow, Russia - to study film & television directing.
During her 2nd year, Dina officially began working in the country's film industry and has held various positions, starting as a script-supervisor, and clapper-loader, working her way up to 1st-assistant director.
In 2012 Dina graduated VGIK with a master's degree (w/ honors) from their prestigious directing program, and immediately upon graduating, Dina's incredible talents landed her a highly-coveted job directing episodes of the most popular comedy television shows in Russia.
Among them was the ½-hour comedy series, INTERNS, which aired for 6 years, ran for 14 seasons, and a total of 280 episodes -- *Dina Shturmanova directed 60 consecutive episodes of this series on her own.*
She also directed 40 episodes of the 2nd most-popular TV series in Russia, UNIVER - a ½-hour comedy about the life of college students living in a dormitory block in a Moscow neighborhood.
Not wishing to relegate herself solely to comedy, Dina confidently embraced other genres as well and directed 20 episodes of the mystical sci-fi series FORTUNETELLER, which is still popular among viewers to this day.
In addition to television, Dina has a couple of successful feature films under her belt - the two romantic-comedies, BARTENDER and HEAT - as well as a popular web-series called FRIENDMATES, where Dina served not only as a director, but also as a writer & showrunner.
She directed all 10 episodes of season one, which was extremely successful, garnering 60+ million views, and prompted a highly-competitive sale to European streaming & TV platforms.
The second season of FRIENDMATES was scheduled to commence shooting in early-2022; however, after Russia's aggression against Ukraine, Dina's homeland, she could no longer stay in Russia and came back to the USA.
Dina currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband - filmmaker Egor Baranov - and their newborn son, where she continues her career as a director and screenwriter.
