Director | Inside the Notebook

After starting as a singer-songwriter, Alejandra Hou felt inspired to direct her music videos, ultimately leading her to pursue what would be her biggest passion, filmmaking. This led her to enroll at The Los Angeles Film School, where she started to get more involved in the filmmaking process but specifically finding a huge passion for directing, editing, and writing.

As a multicultural raised person born in Panama and raised by Chinese parents, she finds exciting to discover, create, and share stories with significant meaning to create awareness about different aspects of life. Her first short film called "Pulse", directed by her, won five awards such as Best LGBT Short, Best Female Director, Best Student Director, and Best Short Film.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

“Growing up in a Chinese family wasn’t easy. In a typical Chinese family, kids basically grow up by themselves and intimate family moments are rare. Given this, I can relate with the main character of this story because even though I had a mother and a father, they were not fully there with me. I grew up feeling alone, just as Istar felt as she grew up orphaned."

Although, I don't regret any of it because I am the woman who I am today thanks to my parents. Their weird way to teach life and show love made me a stronger and better person.

This story also means a lot to me because it talks about something that happened to me when I was a kid. Child sexual abuse. When it happened to me, I didn’t think it was a common thing until I met a lot of people that went through the same situation. 18 years later, I’m ready to talk about this issue. Here is where Inside the Notebook comes. I want people to know how painful it is to grow up without parents taking care of them and the dangers of it."