Mike Cuenca is a Los Angeles self-taught award-winning filmmaker.

He is also the creator of punks, mods, and rockers web series Oblivion, which he co-wrote, edited, produced, directed and acted in.

In 2012 Cuenca completed two features: the absurdist crime yarn Jerry Powell & The Delusions of Grandeur and By the Wayside, an  improvised docu-comedy.  Wayside won the Best Feature award at the New York Riverlight Film Fest with Cuenca earning the Hitchcock Award for Outstanding Direction.  

He currently has three feature scripts in the pipeline: the ‘adult fairy tale’ Zora in Desire, Over the Moon – a By the Wayside spin-off focusing on the life of fictional lounge singer Bill Mosscone, and As the Crows Fly a gothic horror film dealing with a psychotic religious cult.

When not working on film Cuenca performs with Dignitary, his “dark alternative” band with photographer Amberlie Bankoff, actor Joey Halter, Carolyn Schoenburg, and drummer Nick Liberatore.

Cuenca’s growing body of work addresses such themes as personal identity, freedom, and absurdism with a dose of slapstick. He cites his major influences as Woody Allen, Federico Fellini, the French New Wave and, of course, the Marx Bros.