The Argentine filmmaker rejects polish for authenticity, reshaping how fashion is expressed on screen.
Director Clara Cullen moves through cinema, opera, theater, and fashion with rare fluidity. Born in Argentina and now based between Los Angeles and Europe, she’s known for tactile, intimate films guided by instinct as much as technique.
Her path began in Buenos Aires, where she studied at Universidad del Cine, a school rooted in Nouvelle Vague sensibilities. Later, documentary training at Parsons in New York exposed her to the pragmatism of American sets.
She started her career working for Spike Lee and under the mentorship of Werner Herzog. “Working with Spike Lee taught me that the only part in the movie set I wanted to be in was in the director’s chair,” she said. “Herzog gave me the confidence that I had something inside of me to make films.”
“All of a sudden, I lost that soul that made projects mine… so I had to adapt to make them look a bit more ‘homemade. I leave those mistakes on purpose, and it gives a certain patina that reflects who I am as a person.”
Cullen approaches filmmaking like craft. “I think of myself as an artisan, not an artist,” she explained. She favors handheld shooting, visible “imperfections,” and edits that breathe or cut abruptly, an aesthetic influenced by her Buenos Aires training.
“All of a sudden, I lost that soul that made projects mine… so I had to adapt to make them look a bit more ‘homemade,’” she said. “I leave those mistakes on purpose, and it gives a certain patina that reflects who I am as a person.”
Place informs her work as much as process. New York sharpens her pace, and Los Angeles gives her room to work and raise her children. Buenos Aires remains her emotional anchor. “I long for Buenos Aires every day,” she said.
Though she doesn’t intentionally work toward specific themes, Cullen often returns to feminine identity, lineage, and inherited strength. She explores the emotional labor women carry and the quiet resilience within domestic and creative life.
Her own family history partly grounds that perspective. Her film Lo que no se ve ni se oye (Lost and Found) (2021) centers on her great-grandmother, Argentina’s first female film director.
Across mediums, she approaches each project as an opportunity to articulate a point of view. “I guess I’m also talking about being a woman in the world today, which I find fascinating,” she said.
“I crashed Gabi’s first wedding, and we met at her dance floor. Since then, we’ve been inseparable… We talk every day.”
A defining creative partnership in her career is her ongoing collaboration with designer Gabriela Hearst. “I crashed Gabi’s first wedding, and we met at her dance floor,” she said. “Since then, we’ve been inseparable… We talk every day.”
Their first meeting became the start of a long creative friendship, starting when stylist Camilla Nickerson later hired Cullen to film one of Hearst’s shows.
Cullen’s latest film, Beyond the Season, follows Hearst through the lead-up to her Paris Fashion Week show. It extends Cullen’s interest in womanhood and labor while tapping into Hearst’s own relationship to sustainability and craft, shaped by her upbringing on a Uruguayan ranch.
In the film, Cullen pairs the frenzy of fashion week with moments of deliberate calm. Scenes of rushed fittings and weather complications alternate with the devotional labor of sewing, shaping jewelry, and selecting fabrics.
That stillness continues in Hearst’s return to Uruguay, with scenes of horses running across fields, birdsong, and the breeze moving through tall grass.
These moments of quiet reveal the cadence behind Hearst’s work. “In the crazy world of today, there are still people who protect quality to create timeless pieces,” Cullen explained. “Gabi is not here for the moment, but for the legacy.”
Hearst’s layered universe gives Cullen the kind of narrative texture she gravitates toward—where beauty and purpose intermingle. By holding chaos and tranquility in tension, Cullen underscores the emotional clarity and attention her subject embodies. “It reinforces the need for silence, love, and attention to detail,” she said.
“People that work in that industry are smart, well read… and way less pretentious than people in the film world or in the art world.”
Despite the commercial stakes of fashion filmmaking, Cullen insists that high-level houses want work that feels personal rather than polished for its own sake.
“They hire you because they like your projects that are not exclusively fashion, so you have freedom,” she said. She rejects the idea that the fashion world is superficial. “People that work in that industry are smart, well read… and way less pretentious than people in the film world or in the art world.”
Cullen is now juggling several new works, including a dark comedy about her experience with her parents’ death. With each project, she asks what defines us and how we carry those stories forward.
By Ally Reavis.
Homepage video and film stills above from the Gabriela Hearst film, , Beyond the Season, courtesy of Clara Cullen. Homepage film still and black and white film still above from Lo que no se ve ni se oye (Lost and Found) (2021), courtesy of Clara Cullen.
