When filmmaker Camille Summers-Valli cleared out her late grandmother’s house, she discovered a stash of beautiful, hidden poems that changed everything.
In this interview with Close-Up Culture’s James Prestridge, she explains how those secret depths inspired Untitled Woman, her striking debut narrative short.
James: You spent years working in fashion, including with brands like Burberry, Chanel and Gucci, as well as on projects around body image. How much did that experience influence the way you approached Untitled Woman?
Camille Summers-Valli: I don’t know if working in fashion influenced the film directly. I see the narrative work I do as quite separate from the commercial work.
What it did give me, though, was an arsenal of experience. I didn’t go to film school, but I started working in commercials and fashion quite early on, and I learned so much from that – about image-making, visual sensibility, art direction and working with talent.
All of that allowed me to walk onto the set of Untitled Woman with much more confidence than I otherwise would have had.
In terms of the subject matter, I’m sure fashion informed it subconsciously. There’s obviously something about the gaze in fashion that society grants certain women, and what happens to women for whom that gaze eventually fades.
But I think the film came much more from an experience with my grandmother than it did from fashion.
James: Can you tell us more about that experience with your grandmother?
Camille Summers-Valli: My grandmother seemed to disappear into shades of beige. She tried very hard to hide herself from the world. She lacked a huge amount of confidence, and I used to find her very meek.
That frustrated me because I grew up with a very different set of expectations about the kind of woman I could be and wanted to be. My grandmother seemed as though she had happily disappeared into herself, into the background.
I really judged her for that.
Then, when she passed away, my family was clearing out her house. In drawers and little hidden pockets around the house, I found all these poems she’d written.
They were beautiful poems that illuminated this incredibly rich inner life that she’d never shown anyone.
It made me very sad, but it also made me aware of the depths that we hide within ourselves – because we feel that we have to, or because we feel that we want to.
And so Dawn came from that.
James: The opening of the film, with Dawn walking in front of those commercial fashion advertisements, seems to speak to that idea. What made you want to open the film in that way?
Camille Summers-Valli: I very much believe that, in our subconscious minds, we carry an arsenal of images.
For some people it might be stories; for other people it might be music or notes. For me, it’s images. I carry this arsenal of images that I’ve been absorbing since I was old enough to see, and I believe those images leave an imprint on our daily lives.
I can speak about my own experience as a woman, but I’m sure something similar exists for men, and I’m sure it exists differently for people of different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.
For me, as a woman, I absorbed all these images of women who were afforded a gaze – beautiful women, sexy women, young women – and those images defined me through my teenage years and into my early twenties.
I think a lot of women have this experience. And now, especially with social media, it’s become something else entirely. We carry this imprint of womanhood in our subconscious minds, and it affects our conscious experience.
So that opening montage was very much an attempt to crack open what we carry in our minds and in our subconscious.
James: You mentioned that your grandmother was a starting point for the story, but you co-wrote the film with Rosemarie Vind. Can you tell us a little about that collaboration and what she brought to the project?
Camille Summers-Valli: She brought knowledge of narrative.
As I said, I started in fashion, but I actually started in fine art, where narrative isn’t necessarily emphasised. In fine art, you challenge narrative rather than necessarily celebrating it.
So my weak point was really writing – understanding structure and dialogue.
When Rose and I met, I took her this one image that I had in my mind and said, “How do we build a story out of this?”
If I’d made it on my own, I probably would have made a 20-minute piece of dribble with beautiful shots and lots of music, but there wouldn’t necessarily have been any plot.
Rose and I are now working together on our third draft of a feature script, as well as a couple of other projects, because she’s just brilliant.
She’s also Danish, and I feel like the Danes have this wonderful dark, dry humour.
James: You worked with Julianne Nicholson, with relatively little dialogue, to tell us who Dawn is. How did the two of you build that character and her history without having to explain everything to the audience?
Camille Summers-Valli: That’s a very good question.
I can’t speak for Julianne, but I feel like when she read the script, she immediately jumped on a Zoom call with me. She’d never done a short film before, despite having had this long, amazing career, and she was incredibly enthusiastic about doing it.
I wanted to be super prepped, to give her a substantial backstory for Dawn. She said, “You know what? It’s okay. Just give me a couple of points.”
So she was very much working on her own, and I trusted her completely because she’s Julianne Nicholson.
Then we got onto set, and she handed me a short story about a woman in her sixties who sneaks away from her family to disappear and start a new life.
I realised that she and I were fascinated by similar characters: women who hadn’t necessarily been granted agency and wanted to find it.
Then she did the first take. It was actually the shot of her on the stairs as she leaves the art class, and it was the first shot we filmed.
I was nervous because it’s a difficult scene, but she did it and I remember thinking, “wow, this woman has brought more depth to the character than I even had in my mind.”
We did another take and I gave her a little note, but the first take was better.
That was pretty much how the whole process went.
James: There are some really eccentric and interesting characters in the art class. Can you tell us a little about them and what you wanted to explore through those characters?
Camille Summers-Valli: Bruce, who was played by Paul Hunter, was very much inspired by the type of man who lived through the #MeToo era but never quite caught up with it.
There’s a generation of men for whom culture has changed hugely from when they were younger. What’s acceptable has completely changed, and I think some of them are trying to catch up with that.
It can be quite comedic.
Originally, Rose and I had written Bruce as essentially “the horrible man”. But we both decided that we didn’t just want to write horrible men. Actually, having empathy and trying to understand why some men are struggling to exist in today’s world is much more interesting.
That was very much what Bruce represented.
The art teacher (played by Charles Melton) was really the glue of the story. I wanted him to be a kind of safety net for Dawn – a safe space where she could learn to open up.
Then there’s Lucy, played by Lydia Page. She’s an interesting dichotomy: a woman who wants to be progressive but also fears what has sometimes been culturally perceived as the doomed fate of women – to disappear.
We liked writing a character who was trying to be progressive while simultaneously struggling with her own anxiety about becoming Dawn.
James: You’ve mentioned that you’re working on several projects with Rosemarie. Can you tell us anything about those, and what your broader plans are for directing?
Camille Summers-Valli: The project that’s furthest along has been commissioned by Film4. We’re currently on the third draft, and it’s the story of three women in three very different periods of time who are all affected by the myth of the sirens.
It’s dark and it’s quite plot-driven. That’s probably all I can say about it at the moment, but I’m excited about the project. It’s going to be ambitious, but it’s something I feel very close to.
As far as directing goes, now that I’ve had my child, I’m still working out who I am after having a baby and how that will enrich my art.
I know it’s going to enrich it incredibly. I just haven’t figured out what that looks like yet.
I’m still finding my rhythms as a mother, a writer and a filmmaker. But I really want to go deep into narrative now.
I’d love to make another short. Shorts are fun, and it’s been so wonderful to experience the success this one has had. I’m incredibly grateful that people are connecting with it.
James: We always have the temptation, when interviewing someone who’s made a short film, to immediately ask about a future feature. But we love short films on Close-Up Culture, so please do make another one.
Camille Summers-Valli: That’s so lovely to hear. I think it’s amazing when you see a short that works so well in such a short period of time, and where the ending really lands.
Rose always says it’s harder to write a short than a feature film!
James: You definitely have that ending here.
Camille Summers-Valli: I’m glad. A few people told us to cut the ending, and I was like, absolutely not.
James: It works so well. When you go to a lot of film festivals and sit through an hour and a half of shorts – sometimes more in a day – an ending like that can really jolt you out of your seat and separate a film from the pack.
One last quick question. You mentioned how becoming a mother may have changed you as a filmmaker. Did you actually make this film while you were pregnant?
Camille Summers-Valli: Yes. I was seven months pregnant.
Rose and I had written the script about a year before I got pregnant. We were constantly tweaking it, but I just kept not getting it made. I kept finding excuses not to make it.
I think I was terrified of making something that was actually my own.
Then I got pregnant and thought, “Well, now I’ve got no choice. I have to make it’.
It was an amazing experience. It was a four- or five-day shoot, and I experienced this incredible sense of power in making it while I was pregnant.
There was also so much support from the cast and crew. Maybe there was even more grace given to me because it was a really chaotic short-film shoot.
And now it’s really cool seeing my daughter and knowing that she was there with me for the whole ride.
James: She’s a filmmaker without even knowing it.
Camille Summers-Valli: Yes. I should have given her a credit!
Untitled Woman is screening as part of the 2026 BFI London Film Festival – for more info
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