Irina Dakeva is an established filmmaker currently based in Paris. Originally trained as an art director/graphic designer in the most prestigious French private art school in Paris – “ESAG Penninghen”, she was granted a full scholarship and graduated a year earlier at the top of her class receiving a Master of Fine Arts Diploma. Irina began her career experimenting with a wide range of techniques – from video to digital and hand drawn animation. Her work and successful involvement varies from fashion films, video installations and commercials to live video performances, exhibitions and even music videos, working with many up and rising musicians from the French electro scene – Sebastian, Cassius, Justice, Ed Banger. In 2010, she manually drew around 2500 watercolour frames that she then animated in Breakbot’s “Baby I’m yours” music video (gathering more than 22 million views), which became a world wide success with many awards. After this huge success, Cartier and the cult music band Air invited her to replicate her innovative watercolour animation technique and direct a short movie called “Painted Love”. In addition to her film work, Irina exhibited at that time over 700 drawings, paintings and other art works. She is interested in developing projects that are tailored to each client’s needs, engaging in the development of different techniques to support each brand’s Identity while infusing it with her personal vision as a way of recreating herself. In 2012, she worked on the creation of the first “Black Opium” by Yves Saint Laurent campaign starring Edie Campbell. She directed a prodigious and audacious film – a punk, antiheroine lost in the streets of Shanghai – that elevated Edie Campbell to the image of an icon. She also directed commercials for other fashion brands, such as Louis Vuitton, Paco Rabanne, Comptoir des Cotonniers and Elie Saab, Pullman, Armani. Her campaign for “Black XS” by Paco Rabanne was shot in LA and starred the famous singer and model Sky Ferreira and actor Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis. In 2016, “Black XS” won several awards, including a prestigious “Epica” award, as well as a Silver award at the Cristal Festival. 
The last three were very busy years for Irina, as she worked in New York on the new “Good Girl” campaign for Carolina Herrera alongside Santiago&Mauricio, then she directed a spot starring Lineisy Montero for a new fragrance by Elie Saab and she redefined the transience of beauty with her film “Forever Young” – a campaign by Vichy. In 2018 she started a new collaboration with Armani, Cartier and YSL, directing for them more than 15 international campaigns.