By: Shawn Mars
Viktoriia Galashova makes films about people caught inside systems they cannot control. The writer-director grew up in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in a home shaped by art. She studied piano, sang in choir, and worked in visual arts long before she picked up a camera. That mix of disciplines still guides how she builds a scene. Galashova treats music, image, and silence as one connected language.
A Foundation in Music and Visual Art
Her artistic training started early and covered a lot of ground. Years at the piano taught her rhythm and timing. Choir taught her how sound carries emotion. Visual arts sharpened her eye for composition and color. When she turned to cinema, these skills came with her.
Asked how that training shapes the way she works today, Galashova points to sound and image as two halves of the same instinct.
“I think that background has made me very attentive to both sound and image,” she says. “Coming from piano and choir, I naturally pay close attention to rhythm, silence, and how music or sound can shape the emotion of a scene. And my visual arts background makes me very conscious of composition, color, and how a shot looks and feels. So when I approach a scene today, I’m thinking about how all of those elements work together to tell the story, not just what’s happening in the frame.”
From Yekaterinburg to Los Angeles
Her path into film began in school. She filmed her classmates and built small creative projects with whatever tools she had. Later she joined workshops at the Sverdlovsk Film Studio. Mentors there praised her early work for its sensitivity and its visual storytelling.
Galashova wanted more range and formal training. She earned a BA in Film and TV Production at Griffith College Dublin. She then moved to the United States and completed an MA in Filmmaking at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. She remains based in the Los Angeles area, where she continues to write and direct.
That path across three countries left a mark on how she sees people, and by extension, how she writes them.
“I think living and studying in Russia, Ireland, and the United States exposed me to very different people, mentalities, and ways of seeing the world,” she says. “I’ve always been inspired by observing people, how they communicate, how they work, and how they approach life differently. Moving between these places taught me to pay attention to those differences, and I think that naturally influences the way I see characters and tell stories. It has made my voice more open and observant, and I try to bring those different perspectives into my work.”
A Vision Built on Vulnerability
Galashova describes her work as an exploration of human vulnerability within controlled environments. She blends emotional realism with psychological tension and a surreal tone. Her characters often feel small inside larger structures. They are watched. They are tested. They rarely hold the power.
For her, the pull toward that theme is rooted in questions of fairness and how people react when they lose control of their own situation.
“I’m drawn to this theme because I want to explore situations where people experience injustice and inequity, especially when they are placed in environments where they have little control,” she says. “I’m interested in the vulnerability that comes out of those situations and in how people respond to them. Ultimately, I want my films to make viewers feel something, but also to think about these issues from a more personal and human perspective.”
That interest runs into a second question her films keep circling back to, the fragility of safety itself.
“Maybe because I’m interested in how fragile our sense of safety can be,” she says. “We can feel completely safe and in control, and then life can change in a second. I wanted to explore that sudden shift and show how quickly a situation can turn, especially when we realize that the things we trust to protect us may not actually give us the safety we believe they do.”
She points to Black Mirror as a reference, the kind of story where familiar places turn strange and unsettling. For Galashova, the appeal is how close that fiction sits to the present.
“What resonates with me about Black Mirror is that the technology often doesn’t feel completely fictional,” she says. “It feels like something we could reach in the near future, and in some cases, we’re already seeing parts of it today. I’m interested in the idea that as technology becomes more powerful, there will always be people who find ways to take advantage of it. That combination of technological progress and human behavior creates situations that feel both unsettling and very real.”
Inside Locker 17
Locker 17 gathers these ideas into one tight story. The short film follows a young woman whose belongings vanish at her gym. Staff brush her off, and no one takes her seriously. She refuses to stay quiet. With help from an unlikely ally, she pushes for answers. What she uncovers is worse than a theft. The gym has been watching all along.
The choice of setting was deliberate. Galashova wanted a place so ordinary that its unraveling would feel that much sharper.
“I chose a gym locker room because it’s such an ordinary, everyday place, somewhere people go without thinking twice about it,” she says. “I wanted to show that something unexpected or disturbing can happen even in places that feel familiar and safe to us. For me, that contrast makes the story more powerful, because it shows how quickly an ordinary situation can change.”
She wrote and directed the project as her thesis film at the New York Film Academy, and it reflects the themes that define her larger body of work.
What Comes Next
Galashova belongs to a generation of filmmakers who move across borders and carry several cultures into their work. Her path runs through Russia, Ireland, and the United States. That range feeds her voice rather than diluting it.
For now, she is early into her next project and content to let it take shape at its own pace.
“I’m working on a new script right now, so I’m still in the early stages of seeing where it will go,” she says. “I’m taking my time with it and exploring the story and characters as they develop. As for what’s next, I’m open to seeing where this project takes me and continuing to explore the kinds of stories and themes that interest me.”
She continues to develop stories that place quiet, ordinary people against forces they can barely see. Her films ask viewers to notice the systems around them and the small acts of resistance that push back. For readers who want to follow an emerging writer-director with a clear point of view, Viktoriia Galashova is building a body of work worth tracking.
