Lazslo Barna is a Gemini Award

Gemini Award

The Gemini Awards are annual television broadcasting industry awards in Canada.First awarded in 1986, the Geminis celebrate the achievements of TV members of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. Essentially, it presents awards for the best television productions in Canada. Awards are...

-winning executive producer

Television producer

The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...

 of television programs and films. Born in Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 but living and working in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, Barna produced prominent television shows such as Da Vinci's Inquest

Da Vinci's Inquest

Da Vinci's Inquest is a Canadian dramatic television series that aired on CBC Television from 1998 to 2005. Seven seasons of thirteen episodes each were filmed for a total of ninety-one episodes....

 and Blue Murder.

Biography

Barna was born in Hungary and immigrated to Canada with his family in the late 1950s as a result of the Hungarian Uprising. His parents were Holocaust survivors who had been imprisoned in Auschwitz concentration camp. Barna and his parents arrived in Canada at Pier 21

Pier 21

Pier 21, a former ocean liner terminal, is Canada's National Museum of Immigration in Halifax, Nova Scotia.It operated as an ocean liner terminal and immigration shed from 1928 to 1971 and became an immigration museum in 1999. Pier 21 is Canada's last remaining ocean immigration shed...

 in Halifax, Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...

. As part of a 2006 portrait photography exhibit in which Barna was featured, he stated that his parents "had suffered under both fascism and communism, and they said they were looking for a country where politicians retire rather than being executed"

Barna experimented with stand-up comedy but suffered from stage fright, leading him to embark on a career as a television producer. He told the Toronto Star

Toronto Star

The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...

in 2002, "I like it behind the camera. It's safe there."

By 2002 Barna's company, a partnership with his wife Laura Alper, was the most prolific producer of English-language TV programs in Canada.

Awards

Barna has won a several industry awards, including multiple Gemini awards for Da Vinci's Inquest

Da Vinci's Inquest

Da Vinci's Inquest is a Canadian dramatic television series that aired on CBC Television from 1998 to 2005. Seven seasons of thirteen episodes each were filmed for a total of ninety-one episodes....

 as "Best Dramatic Series" (in each year 1999-2002 and again in 2004). He also received the Donald Brittain

Donald Brittain

Donald Brittain, O.C. was a film director and producer with the National Film Board of Canada.Fields of Sacrifice is considered Brittain's first major film as director....

Award in 2007 for the 2006 TV series Fatherland.