SANDRA YI SECINDIVER *Building Yutani and Trusting the Silence

SANDRA YI SECINDIVER
on Building Yutani and Trusting the Silence

interview SARAH ARENDTS

Sandra Yi Sencindiver enters each project with precision that borders on ritual. Every element—tone, costume, space—serves a purpose. She talks about collaboration as architecture, where everyone builds toward the same tension.

In Alien: Earth, she gives shape to Yutani, head of Weyland-Yutani, a woman written into the myth of control. The world around her character mirrors her gravity, the sets by Andy Nicholson, the sculptural tailoring of Suttirat Anne Larlarb, and jewelry imagined from other planets.

shoes LORO PIANA

“Even though I’ve done this my whole adult life, I still have the feeling that I’m just getting started.”

Sandra Yi Sencindiver speaks with Sarah Arendts
for LE MILE .Digital

Sencindiver recalls the process as a study in trust. “You don’t need to make it big or loud,” she says. Her Yutani moves through rooms built on deference, a force measured by stillness and authority.

Between acting and directing, she occupies two distinct frequencies. In Watch, her film that unfolds like a slow pulse, she shaped rhythm through minimalism and control. As a director, she speaks of patience, tone, and the invisible choreography between crew and camera. As an actor, she returns to intuition and the chemistry of shared focus. The conversation moves through laughter, sharp honesty, and the pleasure of making. She speaks of Geek Girl, of award nights that end in chaos and applause, of risks still waiting in the dark corners of arthouse cinema. Sandra Yi Sencindiver is refining energy, tuning stories until they vibrate at the right frequency. Each project marks another layer in a career defined by curiosity, precision, and presence.

total LORO PIANA
jewellery CARTIER

Sarah Arendts
When you step into Yutani in Alien: Earth, the room changes. Do you script that power in advance, or does it arrive in the moment, born out of breath, posture, accident?

Sandra Yi Sencindiver
There is no accident involved, but there is trust. I will get back to that. So many people build Yutani up to be Yutani. It all starts on the page, the way she is written. In the way other characters talk about her. How they pay reverence to her. Then there is the choice of venues, the exclusivity and grandeur of the locations. The way Andy Nicholson dresses the set with such beauty. Suttirat Anne Larlarb, who’s just brilliant, developed this whole concept for her: exclusivity, exquisite tailoring, reptilian, almost brutalist jewelry. We imagined she wears rare stones and metals from other planets. We talked about Yutani as a woman who dresses for no one—not for men, but simply because she takes pleasure in aesthetics, in peacocking for herself. And at the same time, she knows her pristine appearance reflects her role as head of Weyland-Yutani. So, we never see her casual, never informal.

Then you have Connie Parker and Sanna Seppanen, creating a new makeup and hair look for her every single time. They are amazing.

Now back to the issue of trust. With someone who is that powerful, I don’t think you need to make it big or loud. You need to trust that a few but precise choices will be enough. I remember Noah writing: “she has the poise of someone who owns a fifth of the entire planet”. And in episode 1 we even learn she owns a lot of the solar system too, ha! So, I thought that kind of power would translate to walking on water. And I made her soft-spoken, because she’s so used to being listened to. She doesn’t need to raise her voice or move loudly—people naturally give her space. Well, until she meets Boy K, who gives reverence to no one.

Season 2 of Geek Girl is loading—
in one word, tell me the energy of your character this time around. Now expand it into a sentence that only she could say.

“Filip, tell this journalist that Yuji cannot be reduced to one sentence!”

WATCH was yours from the very first line on the page. If the film had a heartbeat, what BPM would it tick at, and who or what sets the metronome?

A very slow heartbeat, that slowly but steadily rises into an eerie, panicked pace—but eventually finds a kind, restorative rhythm at the end.
I wanted everything to feel playful and harmonious on the surface, with just a hint of something slightly off. As if all the pieces are bright and cheerful, yet there’s an undercurrent of unease you can’t quite place. That subtle tension builds quietly, until the truth begins to reveal itself. Then, a few twists shift the focus—leading toward a kind of resolution, but not the one you expect.

Seeking Hwa Sun—nominated for the Danish Academy Award Robert, an echo across the industry. Do you remember the exact second the news reached you, and what sound was in the room?

Well, a couple of months before the announcement, a jury shortlists 10 films from all the Danish entries to Odense International Film Festival and then the academy votes. And on awards night at the festival, they announce the final five nominees. So, when they called out our names, there was this huge roar of excitement and applause from the packed venue. Quite thrilling and overwhelming.

dress NANUSHKA
tights FALKE
shoes JENNIFER CHAMANDI
jewellery CARTIER

Draw me a split-screen: left side Sandra the actor on set, right side Sandra the director in the edit suite. What does each version of you whisper to the other?

They don’t speak at all, ha ha. The tasks are so different—they’re two completely different sides of me. On set, I try to be present in the moment, connect with the people around me, and focus on what the director, my co-stars, and the scene needs. I’m a piece of the bigger picture. In the editing room, I’m the one moving the pieces around, thinking about what came before and what comes after—deciding on the bigger picture. My brain is switched on in the editing room, whereas on set I try to let my body, intuition, and impulses guide me when on set.

Quick-fire, no commas:

book that shaped you

– “Trust” by Hernan Diaz, it really plays with and utilizes perspective as a storytelling device. It was conceptually something that inspired me a lot when writing Seeking Hwa Sun.

a scene that broke you

– oh, I’m such a softy when it comes to films and TV. I cry over so many beautiful and brutal pieces of art. I recently rewatched Parasite, and two scenes are just heartbreaking. The first is when Song Kang-ho’s character, the father posing as a driver, sees his daughter stabbed to death but can’t acknowledge knowing her—and so he can’t help her. And then the ending, when his son, played by Choi Woo-shik, spins this fairy tale about someday becoming successful enough to save his father from the basement. Both are devastating.

a silence you treasure

– when you’re with someone you know so well that you can share a space in silence and not feel the need to fill it with words.

a risk still waiting

– a female auteur offering me a dangerously dark part in an indie or arthouse film. Something Isabelle Huppert would have said yes to 20 years ago.

If tomorrow you had to build a film with nothing but three props and a window, what would you choose, and how would the story unfold?

Oh, what a fun task! I’d choose two characters who live in the same room but at different points in time, and they’d have the same three props: a cat, a bottle of milk, and a bed. You’d watch each of them live through one day in this room—two different people, the same three props, the same window view, but completely different perspectives on life.

Complete the chain for us:

On set I _____

try to be kind and patient. Actors spend a lot of time waiting between scenes—it takes an army to get everything just right. And then sometimes we’ll do the same scene over and over again from every possible angle. It can take hours of shooting to cover just a few minutes on screen. Both the waiting and the repeating can be exhausting. But you also want to give energy to your co-stars so they can shine, and at the same time conserve enough energy for your own moments in front of the camera—so they matter. And of course, the crew are under huge pressure too. There are so many moving parts, and the least we can do is be kind and patient, because everyone really is doing their best. Funny how the hardest work can also be the thing I absolutely love.

Behind the camera I _____

try to be calm and patient. Before I started directing, I thought it was mainly about sharing your vision and giving artistic direction. And sure, that’s part of it—but it’s just as much about setting the tone and the work ethic on set, and about seeing and bringing out the best in your cast and crew while still respecting budget and time. It was such an eye-opener to realize how important every single person and their role is. That experience has made me a more mindful actor, with even greater respect for everyone on set.

At home I _____

wish I were cooler and more patient. Most of the time I really do try to be kind—but why is it that the world gets your best bits, while the people you love most sometimes get the short end? Luckily, my husband and children show me an incredible amount of love and patience. And my kids, especially, are experts at calling me out when I’m being short-tempered. But they all know—because I tell them every single day—that they’re my favorite people in the world, and I love them to pieces.

In the future I _____

wish to bring more great stories to the audience. Even though I have done so my whole adult life, I still have the feeling that I am just getting started!

total THOM BROWNE
jewellery CARTIER

dress ISSEY MIYAKI
shoes JENNIFER CHAMANDI
jewellery CARTIER

dress TORY BURCH
shoes JENNIFER CHAMANDI
jewellery CARTIER

“She [Yutani] dresses for no one—not for men, but because she takes pleasure in aesthetics.”

Sandra Yi Sencindiver speaks with Sarah Arendts
for LE MILE .Digital

photographer + creative director IAN KOBYLANSKI
styling ELENA GARCIA
set design LOUIS TOLEDO
make up SASHA MAMEDOVA
hair ABI IGZ
lighting assistant NICOLA SCLANO

talent SANDRA YI SECINDIVER
via TELESCOPE

RAPHAEL DIOGO *Five Days Under Lights

RAPHAEL DIOGO
*Five Days Under Lights

interview CHIDOZI OBASI
written ALBAN E. SMAJLI

Raphael Diogo grew up between waves and asphalt, with Venice Beach feeding a body in constant movement, Jiu-Jitsu classes, soccer drills, skateboards, surfboards, mornings in Gold’s Gym where sweat turned into chance, a scout stopping, a conversation beginning, the kind that opens a door without announcing itself.

Modeling was already part of his family’s vocabulary, both parents carrying it as a lived memory, so when the first steps came it felt less like invention and more like continuation, though with the restless energy of someone who wants to carve out his own form.

total VALENTINO

“Getting the call for Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male campaign brought tears of joy, a moment of true fulfillment.”

Raphael Diogo speaks with Chidozie Obasi
for LE MILE .Digital

The notebooks filled with sketches, the hours of training, the steady rhythm of curiosity all folded into the way Raphael speaks about patience, about humility, about the strange elasticity of time inside this industry. He insists on gratitude as foundation, on respect as gesture, on presence as currency, and in that insistence there is no trace of calculation, only the sense of someone who has already faced enough uncertainty to know that the ground beneath him shifts constantly.

Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male campaign marked the rupture, five days in Bulgaria under lights and choreography, a job that required preparation of body and mind and delivered the quiet shock of tears when confirmation arrived, not from insecurity but from the sudden weight of arrival. That moment stretched into confidence, into a sense of place, into a reminder that careers are built in accumulations, in the way encounters layer upon each other, in how journeys fold back and expand again. Now in New York, Raphael continues the unfolding. Work, relationships, lessons, always the search for what comes next without a rush to define it too quickly. The horizon remains open, and with it the possibility of passing on everything he has gathered since 2019, the small fragments of knowledge, discipline, and energy that shape him in this present moment.

cap POLO RALPH LAUREN
shirt, sweater, coat + trousers PAUL SMITH
ring TITLE OF WORK
sneaker VANS

total EMPORIO ARMANI
custom eyewear KAT & PAUL AOUN

Chidozi Obasi
First things first: could you introduce yourself to us?

Raphael Diogo
My name is Raphael Diogo. I’m an American/Brazilian model, born and raised in Venice Beach, CA. I grew up staying active—whether it was Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, playing soccer for the LA Galaxy Academy, or skating and surfing with friends. I’ve also always had a creative side, spending free time painting and sketching. I now live in New York City, where I’m continuing to pursue my modeling career.

What made you venture into modelling?

Funny enough, both of my parents used to be models. I never gave it much thought until I was scouted while working out at Gold’s Gym in Venice one morning. At first, I was a bit skeptical, but then I realized I had nothing to lose—so why not take the risk? It really helped having the support of my parents when I was taking those first steps.

When did you realize you wanted to make a career out of it?

I’ve always taken pride in giving my best in anything I do. After being scouted, I spent the first few months learning everything I could about the industry. What kind of jobs are out there? Who’s doing them? Can people really support themselves financially doing this? How do I get to the top? I became obsessed with the opportunities and how much creativity the industry allowed me to express. The spontaneity of it all—every day being different—kept me excited about what could come next.

What has been the most challenging aspect of modeling?

The hardest part has been staying patient with myself and my journey. It’s so easy to compare yourself to others, especially with social media. My self-belief is strong, but there are times when I forget how far I’ve come—especially when things don’t go the way I hoped. I’ve learned that timing is everything. We all want to be part of amazing experiences and hit certain milestones, but we have to trust that the time will come.

blazer FEAR OF GOD
tank top CALVIN KLEIN
leather pants RHUDE
shoes RALPH LAUREN
jewelry TITLE OF WORK

short + vest ISSEY MIYAKE
bracelet + necklace TITLE OF WORK

 And how about your biggest pinch-me experiences?

That would definitely be getting the call that I was confirmed as the lead in Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male fragrance campaign. I flew to Bulgaria to shoot five days of TV commercials, print, and digital assets. It was the first time I really had to prepare myself—both physically and mentally—for a job. That experience gave me a level of confidence I hadn’t tapped into before. There were definitely tears of joy. It was a moment of true fulfillment.

 Is there anything you’d change about your career?

Absolutely nothing. I’m incredibly grateful for every moment that has brought me to where I am today. To everyone who has believed in and supported me since day one—thank you from the bottom of my heart. There were plenty of tough times, but I’ve been fortunate to have a support system that encouraged me to keep striving for greatness.

What have been your biggest lessons?

The importance of humility and gratitude. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve accomplished—what matters is how you present yourself and how you treat others. I aim to show up with a positive and professional attitude and to treat everyone with respect. We’re all human, and our time is valuable. I feel lucky to work with such talented individuals, and I’ll always do my best to spread love and positivity.

Final hopes?

I want to continue this journey for as long as possible. Building relationships and creating memories—that’s what it’s all about. Since starting in 2019, I’ve learned so much, and I’d love to pass that knowledge on to anyone just getting started.

shirt, blazer + trousers ZEGNA
necklace TITLE OF WORK
sneakers VANS

beret EMPORIO ARMANI
tank top CALVIN KLEIN
leather pants RHUDE
jewelry TITLE OF WORK

“I want to continue this journey for as long as possible. Building relationships and creating memories—that’s what it’s all about.”

Raphael Diogo speaks with Chidozie Obasi
for LE MILE .Digital

neck scarf HERMÈS
coat + jacket BRIONI
trousers DRIES VAN NOTEN
jewelry TITLE OF WORK
sneakers VANS

photographer ANKA GARBOWSKA
stylist TATIANA CINQUINO
grooming AMANDA WILSON
intro text ALBAN E. SMAJLI

talent RAPHAEL DIOGO
via HEROES MODEL MANAGEMENT

DEBORAH DE LUCA *Equality at 140 BPM

DEBORAH DE LUCA
*Equality at 140 BPM

written + interview ALBAN E. SMAJLI

Born in Scampia and wired for motion, Deborah de Luca takes the booth as a surveyor might seize a blueprint, her compass a strobe that scans the crowd.

She draws tempo across faces like lines of elevation, setting three instinctive tracks as a base layer, a quiet study before construction begins. From there she lifts the room piece by piece, each transition a new frame rising into place, until the set breathes as a structure of rhythm and light. Lately the final touch often glimmers with a Gigi D’Agostino refrain — a silver filament stretched through a contemporary shell, binding past and present in one luminous design.

Silence holds a private garden key for Deborah. Life surrounds her with music in studios, in clubs, in cars, so she seeks stillness and lets it refill the body. Between the first record and the last drop new selves appear and dissolve, across long marathons of four to seven hours, a full cycle of morning energy, afternoon charge, evening glow. One word: equality, a law for dance floors where categories melt and a single pulse writes a passport for everyone.

dress VERSACE
shoes LE SILLA

“In a techno club, it doesn’t matter if you’re white, Black, gray, yellow, Christian, Jewish, atheist—inside, we’re all of the same religion: techno.”

Deborah de Luca speaks with Alban E. Smajli
for LE MILE .Digital

Her faith moves through cosmic grammar. God equals the universe, a field of energy, color, and music that answers when addressed with intention. She runs her label since 2013, appetite vivid for sound, image, cinema, miles. Tastes shift like seasons of the tongue, sometimes heavy and hard, sometimes featherlight and melodic, especially in the final hour when the sun inside her sets leans toward amber. Craft sits on both shoulders during those passages, melody braiding with steel, her signature: hard pop, techno fluent.
Small rooms feed her with a certain charge, afters where the ceiling breathes and the floor talks back, like that morning in Florence when the dial locked into hard art techno and a new facet snapped into view. The ugliest sound in her memory came from plastic whistles pecking at the kick, a fashion that squealed and left a sour ring. Spin her catalog from end to start and a path appears, a gradual climb shaped by taste and by the sound of her city, a line that rises in small steps and keeps rising.

When the lights rise and the room exhales, a ritual follows. Fifteen minutes of fierce self audit, choices weighed and corners checked, then a homing current toward bed, toward two dogs, toward the sunset that washes the house in gold and resets the chest. Flights create a sealed capsule where the pilot drives and the grid fades into distance, films flicker, thoughts wander, and nerves surrender. She wants the work to live on, a structure that other hands can lift and carry, music that glows with memory and future. Deborah de Luca composes momentum and mercy in the same breath, a builder who treats crowds like cities and nights like blueprints, and across seven hour marathons or one hour transmissions the mission stays constant, read the room, raise the structure, leave them with a song that follows them home. For a long, long while. Always.

top VOFT KNIT
skirt RICK OWENS

Alban E. Smajli
Your sets feel like architecture. What’s the last thing that shattered your sense of control?

Deborah de Luca
I take “architecture” as a compliment, but honestly, there’s not much pre-built. The first three tracks I already know, because I need time to read the room and understand who’s in front of me. Those first 15 minutes are my time to analyze. From there, I build what comes next. Maybe that’s architecture, but it happens live, piece by piece. Only when I play a DJ set that’s streamed online, like for the Street Parade or my live shows from the Vele di Scampia or at Maradona Stadium those are the only sets I prepare at home. They’re not random but carefully studied since they’ll have media exposure. I decide on the tracks beforehand, or even create some pieces specifically for the occasion, but I never fix their order.

You grew up in Scampia. Now you tour the world pulsing through Funktion-Ones. Is there still a part of you that hears silence and gets suspicious?

Actually, I love silence, I don’t become suspicious. When I get in the car, I turn the music off; if a driver is with me, I turn it off; if I’m at a restaurant, I like silence. Because I live constantly with music—when I make it, when I listen to others, when I work in clubs, or when I hear someone play before or after me. So I need silence, I look for it, it regenerates me.

How many versions of you exist between the opening track and the last drop at 4:37 a.m.?

The first track is always mine, the last one is usually not, especially lately, when I like closing with a Gigi D’Agostino piece from the early 2000s. So no, I’m not the same from the first to the last track. I take a journey, especially if I play long sets of 4, 5, even 7 hours. I’m not the same person from the first to the last record. Sometimes I come back, then I drift away—it’s the same in life. You wake up one way in the morning, by afternoon you have different energy, and in the evening it changes again.

Do you believe in God? Or just in bass?

I believe, but not in the God most people think of—not that man with long hair and blue eyes, born in Jerusalem, who should have been darker-skinned anyway. I don’t believe in that. I believe in the universe. For me, God is the universe. When you ask for something, you ask the universe. The energy comes from the universe, you attract it. To me, that’s the same thing—God is the universe. But it has no human figure; it’s everything around us: energy, colors, music. That, for me, is God.

top VOFT KNIT
skirt ISZA
lip ring ASK & EMBLA

You run your own label. Do you still feel hunger, or is it something deeper now? Obsession maybe, or ritual?

I’ve managed my label alone since 2013. I’m always hungry, and that will never pass—whether for music, colors, friendships, films, travel. Hunger will never leave me. Sometimes I just change tastes—sometimes I want sweet, sometimes salty. In music, sometimes heavier, harder; other times softer, like in the last hour of long sets. But yes, the hunger never fades.

Do you miss the chaos of small clubs? The kind where the smoke machine breaks and the floor sweats back at you?

I miss the energy of small clubs a lot. Sometimes, when after a festival I play a little after-party in a small place, I’m really happy, because you’re closer to people. It also gives me a different idea of music, I play differently. For example, last time in Florence, in a club after a festival, I was much harder than usual—very art-techno. I discovered a new side of myself there.

What’s the worst sound you’ve ever heard on stage?

When the sound system isn’t as it should be and the monitor speaker starts crackling, it’s terrible — it breaks the magic.

If someone played your full discography backwards, what message would emerge?

You’d hear the journey. Where I started slowly, climbing step by step—not mountains, just hills. I evolved with my own taste, with people’s taste, with the sounds around me, with the influences of my city. You’d hear that it’s been a steady path upward—not of highs and lows, but always slowly rising.

Techno doesn’t need words, but if it did—what would yours be? Just one.

Equality. In a techno club, it doesn’t matter if you’re white, Black, gray, yellow, Christian, Jewish, atheist—nobody cares. Inside, we’re all of the same religion: techno. And that’s something very beautiful.

What keeps you OFFLINE when your whole life runs on voltage and signal? Or is OFFLINE just a myth sold to the unplugged?

My home, my dogs, the sunset at home. Also when I fly. Yesterday I had a 14-hour flight and could have connected, but I didn’t. On planes, I let the pilot drive, I rest, I disconnect completely. When I’m not flying, it’s still my dogs and my home that keep me offline.

You’ve built something—music, myth, a kind of feminine rage wrapped in steel. Do you ever worry it’ll outgrow you?

No, I don’t think it can become bigger than me. Music is understandable for everyone, and even if it grows, it remains something elementary. I never feared it could outgrow me.

When the lights come up and the bodies thin out, when it’s just sweat on the floor and silence in the booth, where does your mind go? Who do you become when the music stops?

Honestly, I’m very tough on myself. The first 15 minutes after a set I spend thinking I haven’t done my very best—that I should have played another track, that something was too easy, too commercial, or too hard. Even when everyone says it was great, I criticize myself. Then I can’t wait to get into bed, and to go home to my dogs.

“For me, God is the universe. Energy, colors, music—that, for me, is God.”

Deborah de Luca speaks with Alban E. Smajli
for LE MILE .Digital

top YVY LEATHER
panties MAISON CLOSE

photographer NICHOLAS FOLS
styling + production ANCA MACAVEI
styling assistants JYOTHSANA SELVAM + LESLIE GUERRA
assistant on set MELISSA RUSSO

talent
DEBORAH DE LUCA