His directorial debut in the United States, "After School" (2014), earned him awards for Best Director and Best Film, at the World Cinema Meeting. Carlos' impact on genre filmmaking continued with "Hysteria" (2016), his second feature film, awarded Best Director at the Macabre Horror International Film Festival and winning Best Film at the Sydney Indie Film Festival.
He participated in the anthology feature film, "México bárbaro II" (2017), directing the segment "Ya es hora". His creative skills have been captured in 10 short films, presented in numerous festivals around the world.
Carlos has made his mark in television working for renowned networks such as Sony, Discovery Channel and CNN. He has been the director behind series such as "The Stranger" (2019) and "My Encounter with Evil" (2022), both available on Netflix internationally. In the documentary field, he has led projects such as "33%: Unthinkable Stories of Corruption" (2021) and "El que no transa... Dichos, refranes y otras historias de corrupción en México" (2023), evidencing his commitment to narrate stories that address complex social issues.
Not only a talented director, but also a versatile screenwriter, he has contributed significantly to writers' rooms for horror films such as "Human Animals" (2020), "Play With Me" (2021) and "The Tie-Up" (2021) for Lemon Studios. His co-creation of the #VIRAL series and his participation as story editor for a series of Fabula production company demonstrate his ability to work in a team. Carlos Meléndez continues his creative expansion, seeking to tell captivating stories, as strange as they are funny, taking the viewer to unusual places, through diverse media.
Influenced by television and the avant-garde of the MTV generation, Carlos found his refuge in genre cinema and Japanese animation, discovering a strange fascination for how the fantastic coexists with the everyday. Since then, he has intermingled the irreverent with the macabre, the absurd with the grotesque, to speak of a reality that seems more like a horror movie.
