Rustam Vakilov

Rustam Vakilov is an up-and-coming visual storytelling director living in Los Angeles, CA. Before getting into filmmaking, Rustam was studying Physics at the most prestigious university in Istanbul, Turkey. His interests began shifting from science to art at the age of 18. That's when he decided to drop everything and move to Los Angeles, CA where he began a new journey in his life. After three years studying Cinema in Santa Monica College, Rustam got accepted to the well known USC School of Cinematic Arts majoring in Film Production. Soon after, Rustam started directing, producing, editing and color grading dozens of music videos, commercial and narrative works for European singers, actors and artists all around. In the beginning of 2011, Rustam had the experience of working with Dave Franco and Emma Roberts as a 2nd Assistant Director in Cults' "Go Outside" music video. The same year, Rustam had an amazing opportunity working directly with Vin Diesel as a cinematographer for one of the TV episodes of "The Ropes", directed by Vin himself. Rustam has also worked as DI colorist on numerous high profile clients such as Sony Music and Snapchat's Discover partner, Mitu. In 2016, Rustam played an important role as one of the editor's of YouTube Red's first original feature film "A Trip to Unicorn Island", landing it the Streamy Awards. Rustam enjoys working with concepts that resonate with, both the natural and supernatural. His vision brings out new perspectives to the world as he goes deep into exploring psychological connections, esoteric symbolism and undiscovered mysteries. Rustam is developing his first feature length script for his directorial debut aimed at 2018. He speaks three languages; Russian, Turkish, and English as his third. Rustam's top 10 favorite films are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Roberto Benigni's La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful), Jeux D'enfants (Love Me If You Dare), Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, Sam Mendes' American Beauty, Paul Haggis' Crash, Devil's Advocate, Identity, The Dark Knight, and Jordan Peele's Get Out.