Biography
Marina Gera is an Emmy Award-winning actress from Szeged, Hungary, and the first Hungarian actor to receive an International Emmy Award. By age two, she had already decided to pursue acting, making her stage debut at five. She graduated in acting in 2008 from the renowned University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. After graduating, she joined a newly established Hungarian theatre company focused on international co-productions. Marina has performed extensively in Budapest, Parma, Moscow, Graz, and throughout Europe.
With a strong passion for film, she has developed her theatre and film careers simultaneously. She has collaborated with multiple Cannes award-winning director Kornél Mundruczó, starred in György Pálfi's Free Fall (Szabadesés, 2014), which won several awards at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, and appeared in HBO Europe’s Hungarian hit series Easy Living (Aranyélet, 2016), which was also broadcast in the US.
Her breakthrough came with the lead role of Irén in Örök tél (Eternal Winter) in 2018, directed by Attila Szász, who cast her in 2017. Preparing for the role required Marina to reduce her weight to 46 kilograms. Her performance earned her Best Actress awards at three international festivals: the Tiburon International Film Festival (California, USA), Festival de Cinema Avanca (Portugal), and Kyiv International Film Festival Kinolitopys (Ukraine). In late 2019, she won the Emmy for Best Performance by an Actress. This was her first lead role in a TV movie, the first Hungarian Emmy nomination, and she became the first Hungarian to win an International Emmy.
Following Eternal Winter, Marina has attracted growing international attention. She has worked with English director Peter Strickland and is collaborating with former BBC commissioner Adam Kemp at Aenon Ltd to develop film projects tailored for her. Additionally, she is writing her own original screenplay about the dramatic coming-of-age of an Eastern European actress. In Hungary, she recently starred in the television film Nino bárkája, directed by Bence Miklauzic, released in December 2019, portraying a woman living with Tourette syndrome.
