I’m Sally Lomidze, a visual storyteller who’s spent my life moving between cultures. I was born in Russia to a Georgian family and have now called New York home for the past 11 years. Growing up Georgian in Russia created an identity split early on, and moving to NYC at 21 deepened it in ways I’m still learning to understand. I’ve never fully belonged to one place, and yet each of them has shaped me.

Georgia holds a soft, nostalgic ache for me. Its language, music, and films feel like home in a way my childhood never quite did. Growing up in Russia left me with a sense of suffocation I couldn’t yet articulate, but I knew staying would mean never discovering who I really was.

New York, on the other hand, felt like freedom. It let me start over quietly, independently, and on my own terms. It’s where I found filmmaking, martial arts, aerial arts, community, and a life that actually feels like mine.

I’ve always been on the shy side, a recovering people-pleaser raised in a conservative environment where speaking too loudly or wanting too much was never encouraged. As a woman, I also had to unlearn the subtle and not-so-subtle expectations placed on me about how I should move through the world. Film became my way of expressing the things I struggled to say out loud. It gave me time, space, and a visual language to process the full scope of the human experience, both my own and others’. I’m drawn to the beauty of simplicity, the small details that hold emotion, and the feeling of a world rather than the explanation of it.

Over the past decade, I’ve directed documentaries, narrative shorts, music videos, and branded films, always searching for honesty, atmosphere, and heart. Living between identities has made me see stories with nuance and tenderness.

I’m still growing, still learning, still becoming, but at least now I’m doing it with a camera in hand, surrounded by people and stories that make me feel at home.

Thanks for being here. I hope my work gives you something to feel.

— Sally ❤️