Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza

Juan Carlos' first video camera was a rejected Christmas gift his dad received from his mom. Instead of taking it back to the stores she gave it to him, and he never gave that small contraption a rest. Shorts, commercials, sketches, animations, and all kinds of ideas were produced from when he was 8 years old through college; the tapes collected in a big blue wooden box. He was hooked on making movies and going to the multiplex. But his parents enthusiasm for foreign films is what drove him to fall in love with cinema; they'd buy passes to local film fests and spend weeks watching pictures from South America, Africa, and Europe.

Passion drove him to NYU for a career in film, but it never paid the bills. It was a humbling beginning, cold calling every non-profit with a number in NYC, but it him scored his first professional directing gig and a shiny, proud Silver Telly award. One year in his heart yearned for something more, and it kept landing on longer documentary subjects.

Second Skin, a documentary about online role-playing games, was his first feature. He went into credit card debt, borrowed from friends and family, and ate ramen for a few years. There's something reckless and exciting about that, it made needing a win essential because his livelihood depended on it, and so he was willing to move mountains to see it on the silver screen. When it finally premiered opening night of SXSW, he knew it was worth it.

It led to directing a web series for Vice Magazine, and rolling out documentaries on their Motherboard channel for two years. The speed and intensity of building those short form pieces was exhilarating.

Then Juan Carlos was signed on to direct his second feature, and first narrative picture, titled Know How. It was an unlikely film, a real underdog, but he relished the opportunity to bring a musical written and acted by real foster care youth to the screen. A multi-protagonist film that's one part The Wire and another Glee: their true stories and voices were not only inspiring, they illuminated a system that works against those it serves.