Carly Usdin is an award-winning commercial and narrative filmmaker based in Los Angeles, whose work combines heightened imagery with a comedic sensibility, all through a queer, trans lens. Their first feature, Suicide Kale, won Audience Awards at Outfest (Best First Feature) and NewFest (Best Narrative Feature) and is available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Kanopy. Their short film Misdirection played over 60 festivals worldwide, winning Best Director at the LA Diversity Film Festival and Best Comedy Short at NewFilmmakers LA.

Carly has spent years making short-form narrative and commercial content for clients and brands like Funny or Die, CollegeHumor, Amy Poehler's Smart Girls, World of Wonder, Paramount, Absolut Vodka, Hasbro, Smashbox, NYX Cosmetics, Google and YouTube. Most notably, they directed the third season of Awkwafina’s digital series Tawk, and their campaigns for RuPaul’s Drag Race have won a One Show Pencil and multiple Promax BDA Awards.

Carly is an alum of Universal’s Directors Initiative, AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, is a semi-finalist for the 2022 Commercial Directors Diversity Program and a member of the inaugural class of Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ artist-in-residence program, RESIDENCE.