Ioanina Pavel is a creative producer, budding writer, 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. Unlike many creatives in continental Europe, Ioanina got into producing not from a love of arthouse cinema, but an obsession with TV series. That got her in the door working as a script editor, researcher and translator at MediaPro Pictures while in her second year
of college.
After years of translating writers’ scripts into English for HBO Romania, Ioanina moved into producing and went on to run Local Originals. She developed and produced series across various genres and she was a development executive on Romanian-German cyber thriller HACKERVILLE, which won a 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. May One is currently looking for partners on three co-pro projects that Ioanina wrote, touching on culture clashes in Europe, migration and female empowerment.
