Meet Carlos Asse

Today we’d like to introduce you to Carlos Asse.

Carlos, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born and raised in Mexico City in 1995 and I moved to Los Angeles in December 2015. At the age of five, I started practicing gymnastics and a few years after that I got invited to be part of Mexico City’s team for the national championships. I accepted the invite, and my parents did as well because gymnastics was the only thing that could drain all my energy and prevent me from being a disaster at home. I’ve always been very energetic and sort of an adrenaline junkie.

Gymnastics taught me so much about commitment, responsibility, perseverance, and to some extent, about sacrifice, which directly affect my work ethic and what I do now as a filmmaker.

High school was also a very important step in my life. I decided that I would retire gymnastics at the age of 18 after competing in an international championship in Israel.  High school was a time in my life where I got immersed in various art forms. I started doing photography and sculpture for my art class, I played the guitar and found an almost-therapeutic environment in writing. In high school I also started volunteering in a youth movement that focuses on educating young kids with universal values, social and environmental issues, among other relevant topics like history and arts through sports and fun activities, a process better known as non-formal education (this might be the explanation for my love of working with child actors now).

By the end of high school, I had realized I had a true passion: storytelling. So I asked myself: what discipline involves most of the things I like doing? What career would let you write, tell stories, hold a camera in your hands, impact our society, talk to people and generate relationships between you and them? Filmmaking was the answer after months of doubt and fear.

After high school, I lived in Israel for a year and during my time there I decided I wanted to move to LA to pursue a career in screenwriting and film directing, so I made the move to Los Angeles to start film school.  In film school, I found two of my best friends today, who are my most frequent collaborators as well. We started shooting some projects by ourselves because film school wasn’t giving us everything we wanted.

I graduated film school in July 2017 and stayed in LA under the Optional Practical Training visa the government gives to international students. During this time I kept working on film sets, meeting new people, writing my own stories and shooting my own projects when the time allowed it.

I am now studying a certificate in Entertainment Business at UCLA Extension and creating my own projects on the side.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It hasn’t been smooth. Ever since I decided to study filmmaking I encountered many obstacles. The first one was that I wanted to come to LA, but education here costs much more than it does in Mexico City. I started applying to grants and scholarships in Mexico and finally got what I needed to come to California. But I came to an unknown city, with no friends, relatives or people I felt close to.

No doubt the hardest struggle has been worrying and finding a way to stay in the United States doing what I love. Being an immigrant is not easy, because half of your mind is thinking of your next creative project or script and the other half has to be aware of visas, immigration status, etc. Nevertheless, I think obstacles are a very important thing in our process of being humans and artists. Sometimes when we reach rock bottom is when we start seeing things in a different way and approach these same obstacles with a fresh mind and are able to either defeat them or just don’t mind them.

We’d love to hear more about what you do.
I am a filmmaker concentrated in screenwriting and directing. I love narrative filmmaking, but I’ve also created some experimental projects that have an underlying theme conveyed through surrealistic and abstract imagery.

In the narrative side, I’ve written and directed short films, I am now writing my first feature film and revising a pilot script I wrote and workshopped in New York last summer after being selected as a Notable Writer for the 2018 New York Television Festival.

My most recent short film titled ‘Contracorriente’ (Against The Stream, in English) [https://vimeo.com/297415333 LINK TO TRAILER] means so much to me because it resembles so many things of my struggles as an artist and my identity as a Mexican. It portrays the clash of two brothers’ opinions on how each of them wants to approach their mother’s illness and touches on how hard it is to let go of things we feel the most attached to. It is an ode to the mother figure.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Long term objective would be to finish writing my feature film and being able to shoot a proof of concept to shop it around.

A shorter term objective is to find an agent and/or manager that likes my scripts. I would also like to get commercial representation by a production company since I’ve found out that advertising is a very interesting area within filmmaking that I’d like to approach and eventually work on.

Most importantly, I want to keep growing as a person, I want to meet new people with different views and backgrounds and learn from them. I want to keep writing and finding relevant themes I think should be touched in today’s world. I want to tell stories that audiences can feel part of and empathize with.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.carlosasse.com
• Email: assecarlos@gmail.com

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.