Jalena Keane-Lee

Jalena Keane-Lee (she/her) is a filmmaker, who was born in Berkeley and lives in Oakland, who explores intergenerational trauma and envisioning radical futures. 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’s art practice 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. Her films have played at film festivals around the world, broadcast nationally on POV, and streamed on The Criterion Collection and Nowness Asia. Jalena’s work has been shown at The Kennedy Center and The New York and San Francisco Museums of Modern Art. She is currently exploring surveillance and weaponized femininity through working on a fiction feature that she’s developing through the 2026 SFFilmHouse Residency, producing projects and developing hybrid and video installation work.