Director Biography – Elena Vialykh – Film The skin i’m In

🎬 Director Biography – Elena Vialykh

Elena Vialykh is a London-based filmmaker, writer, and former fashion designer, originally trained as a medical doctor in Russia.

Born into a family of educators, she was encouraged to pursue a “respectable” profession — eventually specializing in dermatology. But from an early age, Elena was drawn to creative expression: storytelling, aesthetics, and emotional nuance. After several years in medicine, she changed course and launched a couture fashion label, first in Moscow and later in London.

While producing visual content for her fashion brand — including short films, interviews, and editorial campaigns — she discovered her passion for narrative filmmaking. This led her to formally study directing, enrolling in the MA program at Raindance Film School in London.

Her debut short film, The Skin I’m In, is a deeply personal project about self-reclamation and creative rebirth. It mirrors her own journey from medicine to art — from silence to voice.

Elena is the co-founder of Get All Dolled Up Ltd, a UK-based production company focused on emotionally resonant, female-led, and visually driven storytelling. Alongside producer Stellakis Miltiadous, she is currently developing her first feature film.

In addition to filmmaking, Elena writes essays and fiction — exploring memory, identity, and the hidden architecture of emotion. In 2025, she began working on a feature-length screenplay and made the decision to learn from the best. As a result, she was accepted into two Sundance Collab programs.
In October, she is starting Screenwriting: From Idea to Screenplay, followed by Visual Storytelling Intensive: The Shot & The Camera in December. Participating in these programs marks an important step in her development as a screenwriter and director. Studying under the Sundance Institute allows her to deepen her craft and build international professional connections.

FILM IN COMPETITION – The Skin I’m In

The Skin I’m In is a poetic short rooted in magical realism, exploring how women quietly abandon parts of themselves to meet expectations — and what it takes to reclaim them.
As a child, Nicole poured her imagination into making a jacket stitched with scraps, dreams, and a tiny watch sewn in place of a button. But when her well-meaning parents gently guided her toward medical scrubs — like her father, a dermatologist — something quietly shifted. Two decades later, she is now a dermatologist herself, her early creative spark long buried beneath layers of practicality.
When Nicole returns to her childhood attic after her father’s death, seeking his patient files, she stumbles upon a forgotten photograph — and the jacket she once made. In that moment, something stirs: memory, magic, and a force that begins to awaken the part of herself she once silenced.
Blending poetic visuals, emotionally resonant soundscapes, and layered metaphor, The Skin I’m In offers a quietly transformative viewing experience. Its sensorial language invites the audience into an inner world — where forgotten dreams, once stitched into fabric, begin to breathe again.

🎬 Director’s Statement – Elena Vialykh

I didn’t arrive at filmmaking through film — I arrived through life.

I trained as a doctor, specialized in dermatology, and worked in fashion — always moving toward what felt expected of me. But underneath those roles lived a quieter truth: I was always a storyteller. The Skin I’m In is my first film, and it began not as a career move, but as an urgent whisper from the creative voice I had long buried.

Like Nicole, the protagonist, I once dreamed freely as a child. Then life stepped in, with its expectations and responsibilities. And slowly, that voice inside — the one that knew who I was — faded into silence.

This film is my attempt to listen again.

I believe every person carries within them a creative core — playful, sensitive, intuitive. We are born knowing how to imagine, how to create. But over time, we learn to suppress that part of ourselves to fit into the world. This story is a healing experience — not just for me, but for anyone who needs a reminder: your creativity never left you. It’s still there. Waiting.

For me, filmmaking is emotional architecture. I build with texture, memory, and metaphor. I use silence as much as dialogue. I tell stories that live in the spaces between words — where the heart speaks.

The Skin I’m In is a quiet invitation to return — not to the past, but to the part of you that never forgot who you truly are.