Bio
Lena Abraham is an American-Ukrainian filmmaker, writer, producer, actress, and model — and an MFA candidate in Film & Television at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Originally from Donetsk, Ukraine, she has lived and worked in the United States for over a decade, building a career across directing, producing, editing, writing, and post-production in both narrative and documentary filmmaking.
Drawing on a career that spans television journalism, international documentary, narrative filmmaking, social media content, and performance, Lena has found her strongest voice as a producer and creative producer — the person who builds the foundation that makes great stories possible. She also works as a script consultant, bringing her experience as a writer, director, and storyteller to help other filmmakers shape and strengthen their projects.
Lena began her career in television journalism as a reporter for Donetsk State Television, later founding the John Hughes International Film Festival in Eastern Ukraine — one of the region's first international film festivals. Since relocating to the U.S., she has worked extensively across short films, documentaries, and digital content in Los Angeles and New York.
She spent several years living and working in the Balkans — including Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Albania — where she deepened her research into the Yugoslav Wars. That experience shapes her documentary practice, which centers on intimate, single human stories set against the broader backdrop of war and displacement.
Her recent credits include Checkpoint Zoo, a documentary about rescuing animals from active war zones, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, where she contributed to storytelling and post-production under the mentorship of director Joshua Zeman.
Lena's films have screened at international festivals including the Tokyo Lift-Off Film Festival, Tokyo ShortFest, Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, and the Peekskill Film Festival. She is a recipient of the Maura Mandt Storytelling Scholarship at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, awarded for excellence in post-production and storytelling.
As an actress, Lena brings the same depth to her performances that she does to her films — appearing in and writing her own original stories, with formal training in both the Lee Strasberg and Stanislavski methods. She also works as a model, bringing a visual sensibility and presence in front of the camera that informs everything she creates behind it.
Fluent in English, Ukrainian, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian, Lena brings a rare global perspective to her work. She is at home across every form of storytelling — from TV news and social media to documentary, short film, and feature filmmaking — and is committed to stories that center empathy, authenticity, and overlooked voices.
Filmmaker · Writer · Producer · Actress · Model