Eva Justine Torkkola is a queer writer, director and producer working across film, television and fiction.
Of Ukrainian-Finnish heritage and based in Melbourne, Australia, her films explore memory, desire and displacement, often through women caught between intimacy and rupture. Her films have screened internationally across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.
Her most recent short film, Fisura (Fissure), made in La Palma during Werner Herzog’s Under the Volcano filmmaking workshop, will screen at Reykjavík International Film Festival, where Eva will also participate in the 2026 RIFF Talent Lab.
Her earlier short Something Has Died in the Forest (ЩОСЬ В ЛІСІ ЗДОХЛО) received nominations from both the Australian Directors’ Guild and Australian Writers’ Guild and led to her selection for the MIFF Accelerator Lab.
Her directing work also includes Dead Lesbians, which premiered at Melbourne Queer Film Festival before screening internationally, and Lady Priest, winner of Best Pilot at both Melbourne WebFest and Bilbao Seriesland. Eva was also part of the winning team as director for AACTA Pitch: Focus, receiving production support through Sony.
she is currently developing Something Has Died in the Forest into a feature with support from Screen Australia. The project has also been selected for the Film Talent Academy in Linz. She is concurrently adapting the story into her debut novel, for which she received an Allen & Unwin Faber Writing Academy scholarship. Eva was also selected for MARION ACT’s Hidden Nerve literary development program.
Her feature screenplay Lockjaw was longlisted for the AWG Monte Miller Award and reached the Second Round of the ISA Diversity Initiative. her short screenplay Viktor was a finalist for the AWG Monte Miller Award and a 2026 Adelaide Independent Film Festival Script Swap finalist. Her television series Ferment, currently in development, was a Top 10 project for the Young Director Award Dream Pitch at Cannes Lions.
Eva holds a Master of Film and Television (Narrative Directing) and a Master of Screenwriting, both with First Class Honours, from the University of Melbourne. Her work has been developed internationally through programs including the International Filmmaking Academy in Bologna with Jane Campion and Francis Ford Coppola, the NOSTOS Screenwriting Residency in Tuscany with Lorien McKenna, Stowe Story Labs in Galway, and the Looking China documentary filmmaking program in Xi’an.
She is a board member of Women in Film and Television Victoria and has taught directinG and acting at the University of Melbourne, Deakin University and NIDA Open.
