About Focal Point Films

BRYAN GIBEL | Director, Producer, DP

(he, him)

Bryan Gibel is an independent filmmaker living in Oakland, California. Originally from New Mexico, he worked as a bilingual reporter in Albuquerque before earning a master’s degree from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2012. While working as an investigative reporter, he fell in love with visual storytelling and spent three years apprenticing with the great documentary cinematographer and director Bob Elfstrom in San Francisco. He founded Focal Point Films in 2015 and began working as a freelance cinematographer and editor for commercial and non-fiction productions. As a director of photography, he specializes in crafting natural and artificial light in a wide range of environments. He also energizes his compositions with dynamic movement as an experienced Steadicam owner and operator. His work has been awarded the Saul Zaentz Award from the Berkeley Film Foundation and a National MediaMaker Fellowship from the Bay Area Video Coalition and has been shown by the Independent Film Center in New York and the Los Angeles Times. In November 2022, Gibel and New York-based distributor Field of Vision released Sickness in the System, a hybrid documentary short he shot and directed about the COVID outbreak in San Quentin prison in 2020. The film premiered at the prestigious IFC Film Center in New York. His half-hour dance film, Love, A State of Grace, premiered at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival in October 2023 and played at Festival Videodanza de Puerto Rico and the San Francisco Aerial Arts Film Festival in 2024. He completed his undergraduate studies with academic honors at University of Chicago. He speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese.