Valeriya Gai Germanika

Valeriya Gai Alexandrovna Germanika (Russian: Валерия Гай Александровна Германика, born Valeriya Igorevna Dudinskaya (Russian: Вале́рия И́горевна Дуди́нская); born 1 March 1984, Moscow) is a Russian film director dedicated to the topics of coming-of-age.

[1] Valeriya Gai Germanika was born and registered Valeriya, named after Lucius Cornelius Sulla's wife Valeria, and later legally changed her given name, patronymic (to alienate from the biological father) and family name (in a Roman style) upon her adolescence.

[2] Born to a Bohemian Moscow family (father Igor Dudinsky)[3] and trained at the Internews Cinema and Television School, Valeriya started directing at age nineteen.

[4] In the beginning of 2010, Channel One aired Valeriya Gai Germanika's highly-controversial 69-episode TV-series School portraying teenagers life in an ordinary Moscow school.

The project caused a lot of heated debates in Russian society due to unusual depiction of Russian school routine, including subcultures, promiscuity, alcoholism, drug use, etc.