Meet Giosué Bottini

 

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Giosué Bottini a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Giosué, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

I was born in New York City. We lived in Brooklyn. When I was three years old my parents divorced and my Dad returned to Italy and my Mom moved with me to LA for the movies. Both of my parents are serious artists. I remember being around my Dad always composing music and my mom writing or bringing me on movie sets. Italian was my first language. I have a big family in Italy. I started painting early and began selling my art at three years old. At five I had my art in my first gallery show and also when I was five I had a dream and woke my mom in the middle of the night to tell her “I know I am a filmmaker so I can put all the things I love into it.” A lot of my purpose was clear to me at five years old. The world was shut down and I got to spend that time with my mom in beautiful places and finding my life purpose and the still small voice inside of me. We homeschooled together, and my mom took me around to let me make all my films. My mom always teaches me to put God first in all I do. She teaches me to be myself and do the things I love. So it makes it easy to see what I am born for. Because we have struggled a lot, sometimes its been hard for my mom to do everything, but we always say “we have each other that’s more important than anything else”. I feel my purpose is to help other people reach their dreams. Especially for kids that don’t have a lot and have big dreams. I want to inspire them that anything is possible. I want to inspire other people to find what they are born for and to be grateful for how you are made. To create things out of nothing. I am always inventing new things. We are thankful for everything we have and we try our best to share it all.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am 10 years old and I’m a filmmaker, actor, writer, musician, painter, and mathematician. For me, all of these things go together! If I was around during the Renaissance, maybe it would be easier to do it all. I love my life it’s very creative and different. I go to UCLA to study math, physics, and I attend many incredible math and physics lectures at UCLA which is one of my favorite things. I also go to school at Brighton Hall in Burbank and I love it. It’s the only school that has allowed me to advance and do my passions. It took us years to find anywhere that would accept me. I’m in the eighth grade (I’m suppose to be in fifth). I have made many short films and my first film I made at five called Bird in the Wild won awards at festivals, I am currently in pre-production on a feature I wrote called “The Boy From Rome” and I have another feature after that. I’m also an actor and been in many indie films and co-star on Tiny Beautiful Things, Criminal Minds and Law and Order. I also write and compose my own songs. I also write math proofs, my own equations and have created a national math exam which I’m soon to publish. I have written a novel also to publish. I also am studying finances which I love. I have a film company with my mom called Bird in the Wild Studios, right now we are producing films, and eventually we will do music, books and art. We are always welcome for investors, film financiers, and creative amazing people to work with us. I am so excited about all the incredible projects and traveling, and interesting things we are doing. It’s special to me because Bird in the Wild started out of our kitchen. We have had so many awesome people come and want to do projects with us in our kitchen production office. We started with nothing but my mom and I and a cell phone. We have so many amazing films to make.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

My first quality is passion. If you don’t love doing something you shouldn’t do it. When something is fun you will be better at it. Like math, it is fun for me. No one ever told me to do it I just started exploring math and couldn’t stop. If there is too much pressure or “you have to do this”, I don’t enjoy it and I don’t learn like that. Curiosity and being interested is the best way to learn, not being told what to do. Like harder things are easier for me and easier things are harder. Maybe because they are more interesting! School has it backwards (except for Brighton Hall) like most schools put kids in a box and wants everyone to learn the same. I think because I was homeschooled at such an early age, and my mom taught me to read with writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, it was exciting for me to learn so many different things. Playing music should be joyful, like even if you are doing scales you know you are doing scales to be free to play how you want to later on. My advice is to look inside and see what makes you happy. And then go for it. Be around people who support it. If you are around people who don’t support what you love then you will end up not finding it. You don’t have to be good at something, you have to just really want to do it more than anything else. Time goes so fast when you love what you do.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

My mom has been my biggest support. She is there for me all the time and believes in everything I do. I couldn’t do my passions without her supporting them. She always helps me to be honest and real. I have also seen people comes against my mom for the way she raises me but she still goes on. She tries to give me whatever she can. At times we didn’t have enough money for food, we couldn’t get Christmas presents and things like that, then other times we could and I have seen my mom come through it all. Also my Nonno who is my grandpa, is my best friend. We speak a few times everyday (he lives in Brooklyn) and he is really proud of me and excited about all the films and what I love. The most important thing I have learned is to trust God in both good and bad times. My mom has also taught me that success is being true to myself. Success is who we are, not what we have.

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Image Credits

a photo by Robert Kazandjian

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