Carly Usdin is an American director, writer, and producer. Usdin is best known for directing the 2016 filmSuicide Kale and co-creating the comic book seriesHeavy Vinyl with Nina Vakueva. In 2019, she received the Jury Prize for Best Director for the short filmMisdirection at the Los Angeles Diversity Film Festival.
Usdin's feature filmdirectorial debut, Suicide Kale, was released in 2016. Written by and starring Brittani Nichols, it also starred Jasika Nicole, Brianna Baker, and Lindsay Hicks. Usdin received the Audience Award for Best First Dramatic Feature at 2016 Outfest. In 2017, Usdin was the showrunner and director for a digital web series called Threads, which was distributed through Verizon's Go90 platform. The show was an anthology series that dramatized stories "inspired by real events." It was hosted by Milana Vayntrub and ran for 20 episodes. She was accepted into AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women's class of 2019 cohort, through which she wrote, produced, and directed the short film Misdirection starring Victoria "Vico" Ortiz. The film tells the story of Cam, a college freshman struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder and a crush on their straight college roommate, who becomes interested in close-up magic. Usdin drew on her personal experience with OCD to portray the protagonist's symptoms of counting. It was accepted as a 2019 Official Short Film Selection at the Bentonville Film Festival.
Comic books
Usdin co-created and wrote the comic book seriesHi-Fi Fight Club in August 2017, published by Boom! Studios and illustrated by Nina Vakueva. The series centers on a queer teenage girl who begins working at a record store where the employees have a clandestine, all-female vigilante fight club. In November 2017, it was announced that the series' name had been changed to Heavy Vinyl. Thrillist named it one of the 25 best comic books of 2018; SyfyWire selected Usdin as one of the 30 best writers for comics in September 2017 for her work on Heavy Vinyl. The series was nominated for a 2018 Prism Award. A follow-up called Heavy Vinyl:Y-2KO was released in March 2020. The first issue of Usdin's second comic book series, The Avant-Guards, was released in January 2019. The series had 12 issues in total. Written by Usdin and illustrated by Noah Hayes, it tells the story of a transfer student at an all-girls performing arts college who joins the school's fledgling basketball team.
Personal life
In 2012, she married photographer and producer Robin Roemer. Usdin is non-binary and uses she/they pronouns.
