The people building something of their own

The Heart of the Story

Sofia Vlasis-Gascon is a nineteen year old self-taught filmmaker from Los Angeles whose first documentary, made with her mother, already streams on Apple TV.

A Mosaic Bridge Project Feature

Filmmaker · Los Angeles, California

Sofia Vlasis-Gascon

Filmmaker & Photographer

Based in

Los Angeles, California

Debut film

Dear Madonna, now streaming on Apple TV, Roku, and other platforms

In production

Unforgettable, a short film co-directed with her mother

Guiding directors

Tim Burton, Guillermo del Toro, Susan Seidelman, Greta Gerwig, Ryan Murphy

Sofia Vlasis-Gascon did not set out to become a filmmaker. She set out to film her mother. In 2020, the nineteen year old from Los Angeles began capturing her mom's wildest and most unbelievable stories on TikTok, and the further the two of them went, the clearer it became that these clips were pointing toward something much bigger than a social feed. That instinct grew into a documentary, and the documentary grew into a calling.

How it started

The film is called Dear Madonna, and it lives up to the intrigue of its title. It is an autobiographical documentary built from the book of the same name written by Sofia's mom, Denise Bella Vlasis, whose life story includes years spent working as a Madonna double, both with and for Madonna herself. Sofia never originally planned to turn any of it into a movie. Once she and her mom understood what they were sitting on, they invested in a camera, a microphone, and lights, and taught themselves how a documentary actually gets made. Sofia filmed and edited the entire project while her mom was finishing the book, learning the craft in real time as she went.

For a self-taught teenager who started on TikTok, reaching platforms like Apple TV is a staggering distance to travel, and Sofia crossed it while still finding her footing as an artist. Dear Madonna was released with the help of the distribution company My Spotlight Independent, and it is the kind of debut most filmmakers would spend years hoping for.

What comes next

She has not slowed down since. Sofia and her mom are now co-directing their next project together, a short film based on a true story called Unforgettable. Sharing the director's chair is a different kind of challenge and a whole new learning curve, and by her own account, the two of them are thrilled to be inside it.

What she is after

What draws Sofia to any of this is not the mechanics of the camera but what the camera can hold. She loves telling meaningful stories and using cinematic visuals to capture the heart of a person or a story, the emotional center that a lesser eye would pass right over. That same instinct carries into her photography, where she chases beauty and narrative inside a single still frame.

Her taste

Her influences tell you where she is headed. Sofia counts Tim Burton, Guillermo del Toro, Susan Seidelman, Greta Gerwig, and Ryan Murphy among her guiding directors, a lineup that runs from gothic fantasy to sharp, character-driven drama. There is a fitting symmetry hiding in that list, because Seidelman directed Desperately Seeking Susan, one of the films that turned Madonna into a screen icon, and Madonna is exactly where Sofia's own filmmaking story began.