Highlights
Soft worlds, sharp edges
Exhibition, London Design FestivalSeptember 17–19, The Lavery as part of A Softer World, curated by Alex Tieghi-Walker for Brompton Design District at London Design Festival.
PRESS ︎ Financial Times, dezeen
Curated by Studio Charlotte Taylor with over 30 female designers, Soft Worlds, Sharp Edges transforms domestic space from passive backdrop into a site of agency and subversion. For the exhibition, personally, I activated a five-act filmic cycle, through a script and a series of films that unfolded parallel to the room’s shifts in light and arrangement. Anchor-objects jumped from the screen into the space blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
Charlotte’s and my creative language, design and film, performed as both stage and actor— re-scripting and choreographing desire and control. Yu Su made killer music for my videos to help shape a new narrative around the femme fatale trope.
Gallen’s flash talk at Decididas Summit in Mexico City, 2025.
El Diablo es una mujer
by Elena Gallen (Book)Title: El Diablo es una mujer
Year: 2021
Illustrator: Sara Herranz
Publisher: Lunwerg Editores, Grupo Planeta
Buy online: ︎
Partly film theory, partly cultural analysis essay and memoir, El Diablo es una Mujer restores the cinematic myth of the femme fatale reexamining historical figures like Lilith or Mata-Hari, and films spanning from Hollywood pre-codes to 90s neonoirs, french horrortica to rape-and-revenge.
The book rethinks established paradigms about ‘bad women’ on and off screen, prompting discussions around historical narratives and the impact of gender roles in individuals, as well as critically explores a range of profoundly hot topics that include cancellation culture and the biased representation of sapphic characters and storylines in film and literature.
From blockbusters to European arthouse, films like Basic Instinct, Promising Your Woman or Under the Skin are reinterpreted as portrays of feminine power and sexuality but also as a product of masculine fantasies and frustrations that rather feed on their fears and insecurities.
Les Malignes
Film in developmentA mediterranean folk horror drama, set in rural Europe.
Screenplay by
Elena Gallen
Festival and film lab Selections
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Cinema Pendent de L'Alternativa, Barcelona Independent Film Festival
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Terror Molins Horror Film Festival (winner)
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CIMA Pitch 2025
Pitch deck and full script upon request.
Poems I will never release
La Casa EncendidaLa Casa Encendida invited me to offer a tour of the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to Italian artist Chiara Fumai (Rome, 1978 – Bari, 2017) whose occult and satirical body of work resonates and dialogues with my own practice. An exhibition aimed to delve into the body of work of an artist who developed the languages of performance and feminist aesthetics of the 21st century.
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Genre: short experimental film
Running time: 7 min
Shot in Seoul, Busan, Daegu, DMZ, Mureung valley
Winner of 3위작 prize at the Short Film Competition 2025 of the Korean Cultural Center
Gear: I shot this with a Blackmagic Pro 6K with my dad's vintage Canon 28mm f2.8 and edited and colorgraded in Davinci Resolve
The knives of hell to lotus flowers
Experimental shortfilmInspired by a templestay at Samhwa-sa, in the Mureung valley aka “Arcadia” for its influence on eastern ancient poets and scholars, the film unfolds as a cinematic-vow—challenging us to embrace rituals of presence. Opening with a excerpt from the Buddha’s Fire Sermon, highlighting our enslavement to the senses—yet reframing image and sound as tools for contemplation— it guides us through the visual richness of South Korea: from Seoul to Busan, Daegu, DMZ, and the Taebaek mountain range by the Sea of Japan.
The knives of hell to lotus flowers encapsulates a duality between daily sufferings represented by the knives, contrasted with the potentiality of rebirth symbolised by the lotus flowers, known for their ability to grow in the mud after extended periods of dormancy.