Tonia Marketaki was born in 1942. From 1960 and for four years she studies with a scholarship at the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris. Parallel to her studies she attends the dramatic school of Theatre National Populaire. Returning back to Athens she works as a reporter for cultural issues and cinema critic for many renowned newspapers and magazines of the time. In 1967 she shot her first short film John and the Road and she was also exiled and put in prison for four months by the dictatorship that arouse that year. After her release she leaves for Paris and then for London where she worked as an assistant editor and assistant director with Jean-Luc Godard and Nicholas Ray. From 1969 to 1971 she shoots educational documentaries in Algeria. Coming 1973 she returns to Athens and started shooting her first full-length film Ioannis the Violent. The script for the film The Price of Love was rejected twice from the Greek Film Center until 1983 that got through. The film gets seven national awards, including best script, and is added in the International Film Guide as one of the ten best Greek film productions that was created from 1960 and after. Apart from directing her talent was unfolded also in scriptwriting, as an author in poems and novels, as well as directing theatrical plays and production of radio shows. She was an admirable representative of Greece in many international film festivals. |