Gabriel Valbuena grew up between cultures; Between that of Northern Spain, that of Cuba, and that of the fantastical story lands which hide in between. While having a love of learning from new people, their worlds, and their lore, Gabriel also loves digging into the drama of the human psyche and bringing to light a character's emotional inner worlds, as the white piebaldism hair streak flowing from his forehead may coincidentally suggest. 

 

Gabriel has worked on feature films, narrative television, documentaries, music videos, as well as feature film marketing campaigns. As someone who enjoys using a variety of creative mediums, Gabriel relishes in taking parts from each and mixing them to concoct new on-screen visuals to explore. He lives by his mantra “experience what exists to create what does not.” On an off beat, he may be fiddling with his long piano-fingers to paint new people and places into being, or traversing distant kingdoms in Nintendo games.

 

He has screened his films at Florida Film Festival, San Diego Comic Con, Barcelona ARFF, the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, and more. He has garnered awards in Best Directing and Best Short Film categories, including Audience Choice categories, as well as received the Paul Leder Award and the FLIFF 1st place award for Best Documentary.

 

He has worked with film studios such as Ingenuity, Soapbox films, Disney/ABC, and Netflix to work on film projects such as ’Black is King’, Lady Gaga’s ’Rain on Me’, ‘Extraction’, and more. Gabriel holds a BFA in Motion Picture Arts from Florida State University, with specialisation in Directing and Visual Effect Arts.

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