Asli is a writer, producer, director and editor with over 20 years of professional experience in independent film and video production in the U.S. and internationally in countries like Antigua, Brazil and France. She has written, produced and directed dozens of short fiction films, short documentaries and music videos. Her films have screened at numerous festivals in North America including at Imagenation in New York, Newark International in New Jersey, BlackStar in Philadelphia, Langston Hughes in Seattle and T.O. Webfest in Toronto, Canada.
She has worked with such talents as Octavia E. Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Nnedi Okorafor, NK Jemison, Nichelle Nichols, Wesley Snipes, Tamar-kali, 50 Cent, LL Cool J and Ernest Dickerson. She has also worked with organizations and companies like the General Mills, Black Rock Coalition, Cortes Films, MIX NYC, Afropunk, LOGO TV, MTV Networks and Viacom.
She has been the recipient of several grants, awards and fellowships, including a 2016 Transformation Award from the Leeway Foundation, a 2016 NBPC 360 fellowship from Black Public Media, a 2018 Flaherty Seminar fellowship, a 2020 Independence Public Media grant, and a 2020 Sundance Institute Knight Alumni grant.
As a filmmaker, Asli works primarily in the genres of speculative fiction as a subversive, radical and liberatory practice. In 2018, she completed Resistance: the battle of philadelphia, a near-future web series about a community’s struggle against state surveillance and violence. In 2022, she completed Sundown Road, a short horror film about the residue of racial discrimination, intimidation and violence in the northeast United States. Currently, she is in development on the anthology horror film, Skin Folk, based on the book of Caribbean folklore by the award-winning writer, Nalo Hopkinson.