Yazmin Joy Vigus
Writer, director & actor
About
Yaz is an actor and emerging writer, director and producer who works between London and her home county of Cornwall, UK.
Her debut short film Mermaids World Premiered at the BAFTA qualifying film festival Underwire, where she was nominated for Best Directing.
She is currently working as Director & Executive Producer's Assistant & Mentee across multiple HETV shows for Netflix.
Yazmin was named as one of Film London's Lodestars of 2022.
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Her passion is telling intimate, emotionally complex, primarily but not exclusively, female-led stories, that make you giggle, punches you in the gut and then makes you cry.
Yaz began her filmmaking journey interning for numerous independent production companies in London. She also worked as a professional script reader for clients including BAFTA Rocliffe and Vertigo Films.
In 2017, she was selected for the Widening the Lens talent scheme run by Encounters Film Festival, Bristol.
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In 2018-2019, Yaz worked as a Director's Assistant on the third season of THE CROWN (Netflix).
In November 2019, she joined the writers' room for the development of BFI-backed show ALIEN8ED, led by Simon J. Ashford (BBC's THE MUSKETEERS) and Executive Producer Phillippa Giles (BBC’s LUTHER).
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Yaz was selected for the BBC Writersroom Cornish Voices 2020/21.
Yaz has a BA in English Literature and Theatre from Royal Holloway, University of London, and studied filmmaking at Raindance and Sundance Collab.
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MERMAIDS is based on her personal experiences of returning home to Cornwall from London in the wake of her own quarter-life-crisis. After a successful CrowdFunding campaign, Yaz and the team were humbled to receive backing from several BAFTA & Emmy winning and nominated industry professionals. Mermaids was backed by BFI NETWORK South West, and was completed in 2021.
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She's currently developing original projects for film and television.
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For acting, Yazmin studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York and the Meisner technique in London. She has performed in several London fringe theatre productions and short films, including LA LUNE FOLLE, opposite BAFTA winning actor Dame Siân Phillips.
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In the non-fiction space, Yaz's work has featured on Huffington Post, Elite Daily and HelloGiggles. She founded the award-nominated feminist collective blog aliljoy.com. After several years in the blogosphere, Yaz continually found herself returning to her first love, narrative film, and realised she could be more truthful through fiction.
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