July 1, 2025 — In making the documentary Outsiderness, filmmaker Carlo Alcos found what it means to belong.
The film tells his personal story and search for identity. He was born and raised in a nearly all-white suburb in Canada. His family migrated from the Philippines during the 1970s.
Carlo Alcos lives and works in Nelson, British Columbia.“My memories of that time are very fond, but there's also a shadow side, one that I'm only reckoning with now,” Alcos wrote on social media while making the documentary.
“I felt shame in being Filipino, in being brown.”
He recalled that although no one made him feel that way while growing up in Langley and Surrey in B.C., he thought that he did not truly belong.
The fact that almost everyone around him was white gave him the sense that he “wasn’t normal”.
“So what did I do?” Alcos related. “I adapted, I assimilated, I did my best to fit in, to not stand out.”
Alcos is a digital media professional. In 2010, Alcos moved to Nelson, B.C., where he met his wife. He is now in his 40’s.
Started in 2022, the film has been a transformative endeavour for the Filipino Canadian.
A week before Outsiderness premiered on June 19, 2025 at Nelson’s The Capitol Theatre, Alcos reflected on that journey in a post on his Substack platform.
“At some point in the making of Outsiderness, I realized that the film stopped being the point of my project. It almost didn’t matter anymore; the journey I took exploring the topics in my film and the shedding of the shame I carried for most of my life are what has changed my life forever.”
In an interview with Bill Metcalfe of the Nelson Star newspaper, Alcos described how he “settled into a personal feeling of what it means to belong” partway through filming the documentary.
"It's mentioned in the film, it's like a contentment, an acceptance of the way things are, and like the real answer is an internal sense of belonging. Being comfortable with who I am.”
Therapist and author DDS Dobson-Smith explained in a 2022 article for the Harvard Business Review that belonging is an “an archetypal experience that all humans seek, whoever they are”.
“It transcends geographies, generations, and genotypes.”
To experience personal belonging, an individual has a role to play and that starts with “self-acceptance”.
“Every one of us has the power to accept and honor who we are at our core. This looks like owning our qualities, values, and choices regardless of how we think others will perceive us. This looks like showing up for and believing in ourselves first,” Dobson-Smith wrote.
“Self-acceptance happens through the process of self-discovery and self-awareness. It’s a state we experience when we welcome, include, and take pride in all that we are and all that we’re not yet. When we welcome every part of ourselves, the pressure to perform or suppress our true characters lifts. We create more space to exist comfortably within and can give more — to our work, to our customers, and to our relationships — in that space,” Dobson-Smith continued.
While making Outsiderness, Alcos wrote on social media that the growing Filipino community in Nelson inspired him to learn more about his heritage.
“Spending some time with this community really highlighted to me how much I don't fit in with them even though we all came from the same country. It's making me question my identity, my relationship to this yearning to belong.”
Alcos wrote and directed the 48-minute Outsiderness documentary.
Joining him were Sarah Kapoor, story editor; Jonathan Ramos, associate producer and camera operator; and Kristen Jordan Alaan Sison, associate producer.
Kapoor wrote about Alcos: “It’s a privilege to both witness and support him on this journey of reckoning, understanding and creativity.”
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