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"My childhood was like ALL THAT JAZZ - only set in Communist Romania."
Alex Rotaru is an internationally known, multi-award winning filmmaker, professor, writer and actor. A polymath born in Romania to famed parents - a playwright Father, Eugen and an actress Mother, Maria - he moved to the US after a successful career in film acting which led to the highest national award available for Romanian young actors, to pursue a degree in Physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology - where he graduated at the top of his class with a 5.0 GPA. Inspired by studying cinema at Paris-Sorbonne, Alex switched gears and earned a Film MFA from USC SCA, with top distinctions again.
After graduating, he directed several character-driven documentaries with a strong educational bent, including the New York Times Critic’s Picks "THEY CAME TO PLAY" and SHOWTIME Networks’ "SHAKESPEARE HIGH", produced by Dana Brunetti, Dean Devlin and Kevin Spacey. Meanwhile, as an official U.S. Department of State Cultural Ambassador through the USC American Film Showcase, Alex traveled the world to educate and entertain in numerous cultural exchange programs to Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Angola, El Salvador, Romania, Lebanon & Cyprus. He is often invited to be a member of film and theater festival juries, most recently at the 2025 Austin International Film Festival.
Alex splits his time between directing documentaries, writing or editing screenplays, directing theatre, reading hard and developing himself and others as the development and acquisitions executive for Tradition Pictures, writing fiction and non-fiction and - one of his favorite pursuits - teaching film at USC SCA. As of January 2026 he is in post-production with a sci-fi thriller feature he wrote, directed and produced, MISSING TIME, about the unreliable nature of human memory and experience of subjective reality when confronted with unexplained phenomena; "HOLD ON TO YOUR MUSIC: A Mother’s Legacy", in release, about Mona Golabek, the NYC Drama Desk Award-nominated actor, pianist and author and her Holocaust survivor Mother; and "A.I. SPY" about the long-term fallout of famed spy, Valerie Plame’s covert career unraveling - the latter being two of the three feature-length biographical documentaries Alex recently made about unsung American heroines. The third, "ELVIS, ROCKY & ME: The Carol Connors Story" about the twice Oscar-nominated songwriter of "Gonna Fly Now" fame, just premiered at the 2026 Palm Springs International Film Festival where it won Best of the Fest.
Recipient of a Christopher Award for PBS POV’s THE HOBART SHAKESPEAREANS, Alex is known for his ability to extract unexpected amounts of emotion from interviewees, and getting to the bottom of their deepest stories - as seen in his biographical work with U.S. Poet Laureates of Congress Louise Glück (2020 Nobel Prize in Literature), John Ashbury, W.S. Merwin, Anthony Hecht, and Kay Ryan.
He studied and audited acting classes with Stanislavski/Strasberg/Meisner greats like Peter Brook, Nina Foch, Martin Landau, Peter Strong, and John Hindman. Vocal training by USC’s Virginia Sayre-Moraes. A SAG-affiliated actor, Alex voiced Pastor Richard Wurmbrand for the award-winning audio book "Tortured for Christ", the animation film poem "Cigarettes Until Tomorrow" and can be seen performing on stage regularly in Shakespeare and musical theater readings in Los Angeles.
Alex is an Adjunct Professor of Film Directing USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where he teaches directing actors and film production.
He lives in Beverly Hills with his son Max.
