Designing sets on sound stages and bringing locations to life in major cities and random villages on every continent is the way Stefania Cella has spent the last 20 years.
Born and raised in Milan Italy, educated in theater and art history, Cella developed a design style highly influenced by the interplay of light, shadow and color. The emotion of lighting and the aesthetic package in which it is presented provides a subtle context that alters reality to enhance a story. These elements also exist in everyday life but instead of enhancing story, they impact the emotional and aesthetic quality of spaces and it is Cella’s sunny studio library, tucked away in the Hollywood Hills, where she has researched, prepared and found inspiration for more than 20 films. Some of those include works with Nick Cassavetes (John Q), Barry Levinson (Man of the Year, What Just Happened) and Paolo Sorrentino, (This Must be the Place, The Great Beauty and Loro). The Great Beauty brought her the highest award in Italy as best designer in 2014, the David di Donatello. In 2015 she collaborated with director Scott Cooper for the Boston based period film, Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger. She followed this achievement with her design for Downsizing, directed by Alexander Payne, and White Boy Rick, directed by Yann Demage. After her third collaboration with Paolo Sorrentino for the Epic four hour feature on Tycoon Silvio Berlusconi’s Loro, she worked with Noah Hawley for the Astronaut’s based story, Lucy in The Sky, starring Natalie Portman.
Follow the experience with Noah Hawley Stefania was interested in developing her technical skills and start to collaborate with studios like Marvel to create fantastic worlds, comics was a natural technical transition to experience a new language.
She collaborated with Sony on Morbius , followed by Moon Knight with Oscar Isaac directed by Mohamed Diab .
Returning to her theatrical education and sensibility she collaborate once again with Scott Cooper in The Pale Blue Eye, a gothic tale set in 1820 West Point, controlled colors and tones, with a language very familiar to her style .
She developed, designed and built sets for Blade in 2023 , a relaunch of the franchise, set in 1920, with Mahershala Ali.