Q & A
Q: Which book would you choose to title your life?
A: The Kite Runner.
Q: If an actress has to play you in a movie of your life, who would she be?
A: Natalie Portman, I fell in love with her in “Leon”.
Q: Who is your favourite costume designer?
Q: Which movie would you hand your personal Oscar for Costume Design to?
A: Dangerous Liaisons
Q: Which movie would you give Oscar to?
A: Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
Conversations with Mirela are like an opportunity to enter in some kind of a modern fairytale. She carries a "dose of happiness" inside, ready to share it as soon as she looks at you with her sincere eyes and starts talking, whether the conversation is about work or something else. She is a symbol of a calm creative storm - humble but at the same time bold and true to her intuition. With sustainability and purity, she immerses herself steadily in every new project and fills it with the perfect balance between creative freedom and energy, flame and professional understanding.
From a young age she has been drawing. She is drawing all the time without looking for a reason, without needing one. Only fantasy and freedom lead her way to drawing. And so to this day. She suffers from this modern "illness" where you can't let yourself rest, so she rests while she draws, otherwise she feels like she is wasting valuable time.
As a kid and like almost every one of us who grew up in the '90s, she watched Making The Video on MTV and she had a dream without realizing exactly what she dreamt of, but she wanted "to do these things that are happening at the background". And as everyone is well aware of the phrase "Be careful what you wish for!", she got it. And so, a few years later, after several schools, universities, theaters and movie sets, you might have met Mirela Vasileva as a stylist.
She loves theater and cinema equally. She likes not to get stuck in either and to trust them when they find her. In theater, she finds the beauty in creating something from scratch, from the bare stage, but she is tired of the system and the difficulty of changing an institution built as it is with generations and time.
In cinema, she is often inspired by like-minded people.Cinema for her is a movement, an exchange of constantly flying ideas that find their expression in reality with common efforts, vision and goals.
"Nothing is accidental," Mirela repeated several times as we talked. And in a weirder way, things just happen to find her without her looking for them. I wrote in previous posts about the talented young team of Dimitris, Damian, Andrea, Mirela and Tomislav for whom everything started from the set of the short movie “Irene”. For Mirela, this is the beautiful beginning not only of several creative collaborations between people with a common vision, wonder and ambition, but also the beginning of a friendship.
In “Irene”, she dives into a specific time period and has the primary task of telling the story of the characters through the power of clothing: to either hide or unveil their secrets, passions, dreams and hopes. Every color, pattern, fabric can help you build a character from scratch. Creating a believable illusion through costume design is a very important aspect in her work. And that’s one of the challenges that she always takes in her mindset with every project.
Undoubtedly, one of the wonderful opportunities and challenges in her work is the first feature film she is invited to – A dose of Happiness by the director Yana Titova.
“Yana knew that I can handle this. I didn’t. “
Mirela likes directors who know how to tells tories. She adores the way Yana Titova, knows exactly what she wants and leads her team in this direction, but also trusts the professionalism of each one of them and gives them freedom. For Mirela, this movie happens despite everything, just like the life of the protagonist of the main character - Vesela. You will find no everyday life scenes, no excess drama- everything happens through the prism of truth, self-irony and faith, just like in the book the movie is based on – “Fall and Salvation”. Being true to the time period of the movie, but also being absolutely dedicated doing research on the real personalities this story is about and pulling all kinds of strings to gather the best wardrobe, Mirela did a wonderful job reaching believability on the screen - she even got her own mother’s wedding dress from the ‘90s, and the real belt that Vesela Toteva uses for her heroin shots.
Her attitude and interests in the projects are always towards the story of the character. And in real life, her attention is always focused on the soul of the person standing across. That’s why I can easily say that Mirela is like poetry. She is a gentle, lyric soul, always aiming for the best in people and the world that surrounds her.
It was a pleasure chatting with you @Mirela!
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