She received an award at Plácido Domingo's first Operalia International Opera Competition in Paris, 1993. In 1992 she won the Butterfly competition in Barcelona. In 1987 she won the Cantante d'Albania competition in Tirana and in 1988 the George Enescu Competition in Bucharest. Avni was an Kosovo Albanian man from Gjakova while Nina was a Russian woman from Izhevsk. However, the editors were able to salvage the negatives and cut together the scene Besson wanted, saving 'the money shot' of the film.Mula was born in Tirana, Albania, to an Avni Mula and Nina Mula. The beautiful diva scene was reduced to a mess of film canisters in trash cans.

Associate Producer John Amicarella explained how the film negatives for the scene had fallen off the airplane onto the tarmac at LAX and run over by a forklift. The critical scene almost didn't make it the final cut of the movie. The concert scene was intercut with a fight scene to make cinematic brilliance.

You wouldn't think a concert sequence in the middle of an action film would be the most difficult scene to shoot, but as Creature Design Supervisor Nick Dudman said: 'We ended up with Maïwenn on 14-inch stilts wearing a skintight foam and latex dress that had to be made in one single piece with no seams.It was nerve-wracking, shooting at night in the opera house, worrying about whether the latex going to peel off, or if she stepped forward too far on the stilts would she just scream and disappear into the orchestra pit? There were lots of worries.'

Fifth element opera singer