AYELET ALBENDA
Ayelet Albenda is an Israelian artist and director. She holds a Master's degree in video art from the Berlin University of Fine Arts and has studied film at the Tel Aviv University. Her work focuses on adolescence and self-discovery through alternative forms of storytelling. In 2012 she won the Matanel award for young artists and took part in the 2014 Greenhouse program for female directors.

Director’s statement
About a decade ago I started my research about teenage self representation on YouTube. I was also a junior high school teacher for several years, and working with my students taught me constantly what a powerful tool self portraits were in the process of self definition. There are certain aspects in one’s identity one can approach better through this action, and there are things one can only dare express in the privacy of one’s room. The protagonists of “In My Room” are in a formative moment in the construction of their persona and thanks to Youtube we get to accompany them through it. The film is constructed solely out of internet materials. I chose to stay within the internet space for several reasons: limiting the scope reinforces the theme of the film – self representation. The teens put themselves centre stage and the film works with the impression they wanted to create originally. Second, staying “inside” YouTube creates a claustrophobic experience of a closed world. The closed room they shoot their videos in and the closed YouTube community. A parallel world with its own rules, at times scary, at times empowering with a sense of freedom one cannot achieve outside. Working on the film we made a big effort to strip the materials of their internet characteristics and draw our gaze to the intimate moments which often get lost in the masses of information.