Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Yana Malik. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Yana, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

When I was 19 years old, I was studying international business in University. I knew I wasn’t where I belonged, my dream was to make videos and travel the world, but I was making the “safe” choice. When I came to my senses I realized that if I create a habit of making the safe choice then I’ll never take any real risks, and if I never take any risks then I’ll never build my dream life.
So I knew what I wanted, the new question I needed to answer was: how will I get these things?
At the time I lived in my hometown in Ukraine, so the risk was to move to Moscow where all the industry and success was. It was basically like moving to LA for people in Post-Soviet countries. Obviously this is a risk that ends in failure for a majority of people but I had to give myself a chance. So I dropped out of school, packed a couple bags, said bye to my family and went straight to the place where I thought my dreams would come true. Obviously this story has a lot of middle, but I’ll skip to the end; It worked! I ended up working with the most exciting people on huge projects and traveling places I thought I would never get to go. I even made the most beautiful friends I could ever imagine. This was the first time I had to take a big risk that involved moving countries in order to build a new life, what I didn’t know was that this was a warm up round for all the chaos that was still to come. I’m happy to say that my habit of taking necessary risks has paid off more than I ever imagined it could.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started my creative journey as a photographer and videographer when I was in high school but my dream was always to be a director. I learned everything I could from Youtube and slowly started to gain paid clients and realized that this could be a real career. When I started I was a one person crew. Everything from pre-production to post-production was my responsibility. Slowly I started to grow a team of people who could help me create larger projects and that turned into me director with a crew. It wasn’t long before music videos became my niche in Russia and the success was unbelievable. The first music video I ever did was viewed 13 million times on Youtube, that’s when I knew this could be my job forever.
As a result of the war, I now live in Canada which has provided new and rich experiences for me to express myself creatively in collaboration with people I wouldn’t have ever had a chance to meet otherwise. The most recent example of this is Tia Wood. Tia is a very talented, young indigenous Canadian artist whose life experiences and culture are so different than mine. I directed the music video for her new song “Dirt Roads” and the video is steadily climbing toward it’s first million views. My experience of working with her and her team was so positive and growing for me as a creative. I’m proud of the work we did and hope to have more experiences working with her and other talented creatives.
Being a freelance artist creates a need to be a sort of multitool so I’ve always got something happening. If you want to stay up to date then my Instagram is the best way to do that.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I grew up in a culture that encouraged a mentality of not trusting anybody. The end of the Soviet Union was just 6 years before I was born which left Ukraine in an unstable position in terms of social function. Many generations of trauma created an environment where it was safer not to trust strangers in even the most simple ways. Ukraine came a long way over the course of my childhood, but the lesson to never trust anybody was firmly planted in my brain.
Maybe I could have lived that way forever if it hadn’t been for the war, but the helplessness this situation created, pushed my limits and challenged my ideas. I took major risks and many of them included trusting strangers, just hoping they were who they said they were. While this was an imperfect situation, I found that a majority of the people I needed to put my trust in came through for me. It was an eye-opening experience that showed me that even if trusting too easily is naive, to never trust at all is equally unwise.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Storytelling is a skill. I may have been born with some natural ability, but the vast majority of this skill was an intentional effort to develop my deepest interest. Because I’ve invested time into this skills that others haven’t, I have the unique and precious opportunity to help others tell their story the way they want it to be told. To most, their own lives story feel ordinary, but to me, they lead complicated lives that are full of storylines, connections and drama. I think this is what attracts me to real feeling story telling and documentaries.
Each person has a story to tell, even if they haven’t mastered a mode of telling it. I can use my skills to help create an opportunity for these stories to be shared. While modern technology has fundamentally changed all of human life, it has only enhance our ability to participate in the sacred and ancient human tradition of story telling. Stories bind us together, and give us purpose, they inspire us and help us to grow. Every person has some piece to offer to the unending landscape of human experience and I get to add colours and moments to that landscape, piece by piece. It is one of the greatest honours of my life to be a vessel for the experiences of many.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/theyanayang/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2erpmwFrw4