John Merizalde is a Los Angeles-based director of commercials, music videos, documentaries, and narrative shorts, represented in the US by Florence. Born to a Colombian family in Atlanta, he left college for Atlanta production work (including Whitestone Motion Pictures) before relocating to LA in 2013. He earned a 2016 UK Music Video Awards Best New Director nomination for SG Lewis’s “Holding Back,” with further promos for Lewis Del Mar and Declan McKenna. His short Incel premiered at SXSW 2019 and made Vimeo’s Best of the Year; later shorts such as It’s So Over (a dark comedy produced with Florence) drew OnePointFour shortlist/longlist notes and coverage from Dazed, Nowness, Adweek, The Atlantic, BBC3, and Short of the Week. Commercial credits include Fitbit’s Feel Your Power, Adidas Always Running and Run for the Oceans, CDPH’s This Moment, SimpliSafe, Rapala Get Action, Vega Chip Away, Delta, United’s Summer Schedule, LA Kings Season Anthem, and California Lottery’s Ahorita for RPA (listed among that agency’s Super Bowl spots). Athletic storytelling runs through Adidas running films, Fitbit, team anthems, Rapala, and the Vimeo Staff Pick documentary short 2-3-1 on the US National Paralympic Soccer Team. In 2019 he co-directed Depeche Mode’s feature documentary Spirits in the Forest with Anton Corbijn, which premiered in roughly 70 countries.