Vida Mia is a psychological drama about an abused woman as she suffers an emotional breakdown and finds her inner strength. Vida Mia got selected for the Chelsea film festival as part of the 2020 selection. Vida Mia was a group collaboration by the director Melissa Espinosa, actress Mireya Rios, and associate producer Velvet Datsopoulou.
Let’s meet the collaborators behind the Film:
Melissa Espinosa is a Colombian-American director and producer based out of New York. Her love of fashion, artistic visuals, and storytelling has led her to direct multiple fashion films and music videos. A distinctive feature across Melissa’s work is an emphasis on the underlying connection that we share as humans and empowering individuals to assert control upon their lives.
Mireya Rios is an actress and producer based in Los Angeles and New York. She was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico, attended high school in Switzerland, and now splits her time between Los Angeles and New York City. From the moment she took her first dance class at the age of three, she developed a strong love of performing, eventually leading her to the acting world. She graduated from the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, attended UCLA’s theatre program, and trained with a famous acting coach, Tony Greco. Soon after graduating from Lee Strasberg, Mireya was cast in Faithfully Yours, which was featured at the Lewiston-Auburn Film Festival and was a part of Snapchat’s most viewed commercial at the time.
Velvet Datsopoulou is a Greek director and producer based in New York City. She was born and raised in Athens, Greece. She studied Politics and International Relations in London but then decided to follow her childhood dreams and go into filmmaking. As one of her initial projects, Velvet was part of the support staff that helped produce the acclaimed documentary “Great Directors,” selected in the Cannes Film Festival 2012. The Documentary is a deeply personal and intimate look at the art of cinema and the artists who create it and features original, in-depth conversations with world-class filmmakers. Velvet also produced another short documentary about love and relationships, inspired by the article published in the New York Times, “36 Questions that Lead to Love”. Velvet was also an associate producer in a VR documentary called “Sygnomi,” a project that studied domestic violence themes in our society, in partnership with Greek director Alexia Kyriakopoulos. In addition to films, Velvet has produced music videos for emerging singers, including a recent one for the Greek singer Evgenia which reached more than 1m views on YouTube.
Velvet also worked with the famous Greek producer Yiannis Iakovidis on his latest featured film “ little England mikra Anglia. Outside of her work in film, Velvet is a member of various Greek-American organizations focused on advancing artistic collaborations between the two countries.
