In 2019 Elena enrolled at RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts, where she graduated from the Cinema course in 2023. During her university career, Elena worked as a production designer on various academic sets, including Grandissima (2020), directed by Giacomo Raffaelli and winner of the Rai Cinema award at the Tito Film Festival. In 2022, she wrote and directed her first short film, Le Rane, a story centered on emotional memory and nostalgia, about a broken relationship between two young women who find themselves overwhelmed by life and the incommunicability of their feelings.
In summer 2022, Elena becomes a collaborator of the Figari Film Festival and later participates in the FilmIdee Summer School.
As a final graduation project, Elena directed her first documentary, Diorama, in her hometown in Sardinia, about the struggle of growing up and living on an island and the decision to stay, despite the difficulties of fitting into such a small and suffocating reality.