Jalena Keane-Lee
Bio
Jalena Keane-Lee (she/her) is a filmmaker who explores intergenerational trauma and healing. Her work creates a visual vocabulary for a feminine vision of power. Jalena was named one of DOC NYC’s 2024 40 Under 40 Filmmakers to Watch, a 2023 Adobe x Sundance Woman to Watch, and co-founded Breaktide, an all-women-of-color video production company that uplifts stories by and for the global majority. Jalena is the winner of Tribeca Through Her Lens 2020 and DocPitch 2022. Her short films have streamed on Nowness and Criterion Collection, broadcast nationally on PBS, played at over 80 film festivals, and won best short at the LA Asian Film Festival in 2020 and the Jury Award at Sundance in 2023. Jalena’s directing style is guided by a politic that is rooted in the liberation of all people and radical hope that a better world is not only possible but up to all of us to create. Jalena’s first feature-length documentary Standing Above the Clouds premiered at HotDocs in 2024 where it won Best Social Impact Documentary. It has gone on to play at over 30 film festivals and win awards around the world. Jalena’s work has been shown at The Kennedy Center and The New York and San Francisco Museums of Modern Art. She is currently working on a fiction feature that she’s developing through the 2026 SFFilmHouse Residency, releasing a slate of short documentaries, producing projects and developing hybrid and video installation work.