Stere Gulea (born 2 August 1943) is a Romanian film director and screenwriter.

He was born in Mihail Kogălniceanu commune, Constanța County, in an Aromanian family that had fled from the Kaliakra region of Southern Dobruja during the 1940 population exchange between Bulgaria and Romania.[1] After graduating from the Mircea cel Bătrân High School in Constanța,[2] Gulea studied philology at the Pedagogical Institute of Constanța and then pursued his studies at the I.L. Caragiale Institute of Theatre and Film Arts (IATC) in Bucharest, graduating in 1970. He made his film director debut that year with Apa ca un bivol negru [ro] ("The Water Like a Black Buffalo"); this documentary movie, done in collaboration with his IATC colleagues, Dan Pița and Mircea Veroiu, record the catastrophic 1970 floods in Romania. In the early 1970s, he produced and directed a Romanian Television documentary based on Mateiu Caragiale's life; his first feature film was Iarba verde de acasă [ro] ("The Green Grass from Home", 1978), based on a screenplay by Sorin Titel.