Teona Strugar Mitevska was born in 1974 in Skopje, Macedonia. In 2001, she finished the Master of Film Arts programme at New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. She made her directorial debut in 2001 with the short film VETA, which received the Special Jury award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Her first feature-length film, HOW I KILLED A SAINT, travelled to more than 50 film festivals and won numerous prizes around the world. Her second film, I AM FROM TITOV VELES, was theatrically released in 15 countries in 2008-2009, and was screened in the official competition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Award. The film was invited to more than 80 festivals around the world and won more than 20 international awards. Her latest film WHEN THE DAY HAD NO NAME premiered in the Panorama section at the 2017 Berlinale and will be screened in the In Focus section at the 23rd Sarajevo Film Festival.