After watching Lady in the Water, József Gallai decided to deal with filmmaking and started writing screenplays and short stories. Between 2009 and 2012 he was mainly involved in amateur films in various genres.

In 2014, he wrote and co-directed Hungary‘s first feature length found footage horror: Bodom. In this year the movie opened the Bram Stoker International Film Festival in Whitby, UK as well as collected numerous nominations on film festivals including 30 Dies Festival in Andorra, Golden Rake Award for Indie Horror, the New-York Scary Film Awards in the US and Amazon Horror Awards in Brazil.

In 2015 Bodom was in the final competition at the Full Moon Horror & Fantasy Film Festival in Romania, competing with award winning films such as Welp , Horsehead and Réalité.

In the beginning of 2016 his next horror movie: Moth was completed and finished 4th Best Feature Film at the International Horror Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio. The movie has been called a “thought-provoking and chilling film” by Found Footage Fiction and a “front running for a new horror niche” by Horror Habit. According to Horror Asylum, Moth is “an unusual experience with some moment reminding the author of David Lynch’s Inland Empire”. Moth has been distributed in the United States since 2017 by Wild Eye Releasing.

At the end of 2016, Gallai finished his third found footage movie entitled A Guidebook to Killing Your Ex starring Balázs Szitás (Open Grave, Son of Saul, Inferno) and Tímea Virga (Janus). It has been called “bold, brave and unique” by Top Found Footage Horror Films and “a darkly charming little movie, one that rather effortlessly combines comedy and drama, laughs and terror” by (re)Search my Trash. It collected three nominations at the International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema Nice (best actress, best screenplay, best editing) in 2017 and won the best found footage category at the Southern Sykos Festival. The film was picked up for worldwide distribution by Open Sign Films.

Gallai’s current short film: Echoes is currently on its festival run and he is now working on his next feature horror: Spirits in the Dark.