Article by Carmelo Cherastil, Outside the Frame filmmaker, recipient of the 2025 Selig Award for Emerging Filmmakers, Director of the film Geneva, with which he recently traveled to Friday Harbor Film Festival on Washington’s San Juan Island. The film has also screened at the Oregon Coast Film Festival in Coos Bay, the Liberty Theatre in Astoria and the Hollywood Theatre in Portland.
Geneva is interesting, because I didn’t really know what it was about until a little bit after it was made. I was living in a motel at the time when I made Geneva. I was in sober living, because I'm in recovery…And I was going through a big transition, right? Geneva is really a story about what I've been through. I know a lot of people who probably will see this can relate. At times it could be so hard to face what you've been through that your mind doesn't even want to associate itself with it. And so as I was making this story, it didn't feel like it was mine. Which is crazy, because the main character's name is Carmen, and my name is Carmelo, so it's really not hard to get there.
I was just kind of working on it myself, and then one of the staff took their time to work with me. Shout out Makayla. We fleshed it out, and they really believed in it, you know? And they, like, gave it their expertise, because I was fresh in it, and I didn't know anything about screenwriting, and I've never finished a story in my life, if I'm 100% honest. I was kind of lost. I didn't even know what I wanted to do. I know I wanted to tell something. I know I wanted to make a difference. I just pitched it.
I almost feel like I'm an imposter. I'm a director, because I'm telling people what to do, and cut, and action and all that, but really the best scenes is when the cast were just themselves. They know exactly what it’s like. I don't have to tell Monet how to act homeless. I don't have to tell her how to present herself as if she's in an impossible predicament but trying to rise up, because she's already done it. People call me an award-winning director and all that, but I'm like, "I don't know. I'm an award-winning team member.” That might sound stupid and hokey, but I like it.
A little origin story for me, for anyone who thinks that it's impossible. It's not. I was born probably the lowest you could be born. I was born in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and in that poorest country, I was born in the poorest class. I'm not sure if I was born in my mother's dirt floor in her tin shack hut, or if I was born in an orphanage, but it was one of those two locations. So, no mom, no nothing. But at the same time, I was being adopted while in utero by a white lady, by a white family from America. But then my parents split, you know, single mom in Utah. And so I went from one class to a different one, pretty much overnight. So, it's always offered me this weird dichotomy about life. I've never thought I had multiple identities, but making this movie, I got to see each of my masks, if that makes sense? I was able to show people off the many sides of myself.
What it turned out being was, like, a bigger impact than I probably could have imagined because I got to work with my best friend, and I got to work with people who care so much about their craft, who want to spend their time with disenfranchised homeless youth, who are going through just crazy things, and as much as we try to compartmentalize, we don't always do the best, but the staff always do their best to meet us where we're at.
I finally believe I can do something worthwhile. I knew I had drive, but I didn't think I could transmute that into something that might change somebody. Outside the Frame and Friday Harbor Documentary Film Festival were gracious enough to have me go up to Washington. They covered everything and I had the most amazing time and it couldn’t have come at a better one.
And yeah, I'm so appreciative of the award that I won, and the film festival showing my film, and the people there receiving it so well. The proudest I ever felt of the film was like, when a young man said to me - Man, this movie has saved my life multiple times - that one sentence he said to me is, “Wow, keep making movies.”
Watch Geneva, where people of different backgrounds can come together.
The next story I would like to tell is called "The Story of Someone Finding Home". I guess that's probably gonna be the core of most of mine, right? Cause, that's like, you know, finding home, finding family, finding connection. A little bit of a riddle of redemption, a little bit of revolution. I just wanna see what I can do with it. I don't wanna give too much at the start, but I think story telling is all we have sometimes.
I grew up in Utah with Sundance. I never had that much money to go, but like, you know, it's legendary, right. And that's actually my next goal, making it to Sundance and be like, “See Utah, ha ha!”
"This is the team I won with"