About
Brandvold is an award winning filmmaker and photographer with over 13 years of experience working in conflict zones across Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
His work has been featured in numerous outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Newsweek, FRONTLINE, FAULTLINES, The New Yorker, WIRED, NETFLIX, VICE, Al Jazeera WITNESS, PRO PUBLICA, BBC, CNN, The Intercept, The Guardian, and many more.
Brandvold’s work has won numerous awards, his recent film ‘UNFORGIVABLE’ following two gay gang members inside an isolation ward in a prison in El Salvador won first place in the 2021 Hot Docs film festival, 2021 Photo of the Year, 2021 IDFA, Slamdance, and more than twelve other international film festivals and was the first film from El Salvador qualified to compete for an Oscar. Brandvold was the only journalist to embed with the notorious M23 rebels at the height of the civil war in Eastern Congo. He covered the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and Liberia for National Geographic and was a camera operator for the award winning NETFLIX film HONDROS. He has also worked extensively with MSF reporting on neglected diseases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Syria. Brandvold covered the Arab Spring working on the frontlines in Libya, Egypt and Syria and has spent five years based in Central America as the only international journalist based in El Salvador reporting on the MS13 and 18th Street gang wars, migrant caravans and more recently following the governments response to the COVID pandemic. Brandvold worked in Haiti covering the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, the 2009 coup in Honduras, and recently for the VICE series CRIMINAL PLANET as Director of Photography in Mexico covering the Narco trade of organ trafficking.