Vice-President of the International Debut Film Festival of Cinematography «Spirit of Fire».
Maria Zvereva (Kozhina) has devoted almost 30 years already to the cinema, starting in 1973 from the moment of her graduation from the scenario faculty in the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography. Zvereva, a famous screenwriter and novelist, the member of European film academy, became a the deputy chairman of the Confederation of Unions of Cinematographers in 1989, and the Vise-President of RSSHAF (Russia's society holders in the audiovisual field) in 1994.
More than a dozen of films and documentaries were shot according to Zvereva’s scripts. Almost all of them are based on literary originals, such as works of K. Fedin, T. Tess, V. Golovyakin, R. Solncev, V. Mukhasanov.
The script for the film “The defender Sedov” was written by Zvereva based on a story of the same name written by her father, a famous Soviet writer Iliya Zverev. This work brought in an award of the International Film Festival “Women in Cinema” in Los-Angeles – The Prize named after Lilian Gish “for the best script”. 
A big success came to Zvereva after her joint work with Irakli Kvirikadze and Nana Djordjadze on the film «Summer, or 27 Missed Kisses» (2000, distribution in Russia — 2002) – the script of this tragi-comic melodrama has been nominated for the prize of the European Film Academy «Felix» in the category «Best Script» .
It is also necessary to mention about Zvereva’s cooperation with her husband, the director Paul Chuhray.  The result of their work is the script for his family drama «Remember me as I am» (1987), a co-written lyrical drama «It happened last summer» (1988), as well as a criminal love story «Red America», that Chukhrai will be shoothing soon in Hollywood.
Moreover, there are the following scripts among her latest works: a script for the television ironical detective «women’s logic» (2002), as well as its continuation "Women's logic-2. 

In the end of 1980s Maria Zvereva made a decision to leave the script-writing practice for several years for more productive and efficient work in the Confederation of the Union of Cinematographers. It is more than ten years already since she has become an indispensable participant of international conferences, symposia and workshops, she is associated with one of the brightest representatives of Russia's cinema and her name is well known among foreign workers of the film industry.