Juan Escobedo is an award-winning actor, director and photographer from San Diego, California. After obtaining a Theater Arts degree with an emphasis in Directing from Cal State LA, he begun working a full time job in the nonprofit sector while attending film school at night. This was the beginning of Escobedo’s Hollywood films as a public pedagogy by bridging filmmaking and nonprofit funding.
Juan Escobedo’s film Marisol, a short film that deals with the horrors of domestic violence and child abuse won the “Best Dramatic Short Film” at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival .It was also awarded with “Best Actress Awards” for both leading Actresses at the Women's Independent Film Festival and the Playhouse West Film Festival. Marisol’s script was inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Margaret Herrick Library permanent collection, which is made available to researchers and filmmakers.
Other awards include the Swiss Cultural Program’s Best Film Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the Cinema of Conscience Award from the Sonoma Valley Film Festival for “Soy Soldado de Irak.”
Escobedo is constantly inspired with new ideas from the people he works with in the East LA community. He believes in the power of stories and for the past fifteen years has focused on Storytelling for Empowerment by sharing a vast range of issues through art, photography and film. When Juan is not making films he is working with his long time nonprofit partners to produce engaging PSAs in the style of vignettes to maintain audience engagement and at the same time deliver important information on social issues. Some of his works include: Fierce/Ella for AltaMed, Women’s Sexual Assault for the East LA Women’s Center and Sexy Rubber, a campaign that he directed, produced and co-wrote for AIDS Health Care Foundation (AHF), which was nominated for the CLIO Awards in 2014. Most recently, he directed, wrote and produced Papi Papilloma, funded by the department of Substance Use and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA) and Hillsides. It will screen at the Highland Park Independent Film Festival and the Panamanian International Film Festival in Los Angeles.
In 2008, Juan Escobedo founded the East LA Society of Film and Arts (TELASOFA) to engage youth in East LA, Inglewood, Compton and Long Beach in arts, photography and filmmaking. By establishing TELASOFA as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt nonprofit, the organization is able to receive grants and deliver prevention services through arts.
Juan is currently working on a documentary titled The Truth about the Truth about the Jehovah Witness religion and its practices around child abuse, shunning and blood prohibition. Before the end of 2019 he’ll be directing a short film titled PREGGERS about the current political climate around abortion laws. Mr. Escobedo is also in pre-production on BLAXICAN, a film about intergenerational trauma affecting an aging out foster youth.
