Dea Gjinovci is a Swiss-Albanian director-producer based in between Paris and Geneva. She participated in the 2021 UnionDocs Colab in NYC, the 2021 EsoDoc training programme, the 2019 Sundance Talent Forum and is a 2019 Film Independent Fellow. Her award-winning documentary short 'Sans le Kosovo' won Best National Film at Dokufest in 2017. Her debut feature-length documentary ‘Wake Up on Mars’ was co-produced by the Radio Television Suisse with the participation of France Television and received support from the Sundance Film Institute, the Ford Foundation/JustFilms, the Doha Film Institute, XTR and many other funders and won the RTS pitch award at Visions du Réel 2018. It premiered virtually at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and Visions du Réel in Switzerland, and was selected in more than forty international festivals. She was awarded "Best New Talent" mention at Biografilm Festival 2020 and at ZagrebDox 2021. “Wake Up on Mars” was nominated for the prestigious "Prix de Soleure" and "Opera Prima" awards at Solothurner Tage 2021, and for best documentary at the Swiss Film Academy Awards 2022. In June 2020, Dea founded the Geneva-based production company Astrae Productions. More recently, she has held conferences and masterclasses with the University of Geneva, Al Este Film Festival, Frantz Fanon Centre in Turin, Dokufest Film school, NYU, and Cine-UN and was a jury member at the Dokufest film festival 2021 and Al Este Itinerante 2021. Dea holds a BA (Hons) in Economics and Politics from SOAS (University of London) and a Master in Ethnographic and Documentary Film from UCL (University of London). She is also fluent in four languages: French, English, Italian and Albanian.