DANIEL COTRONEO

Ever since he could hold his dad's camcorder without dropping it, Daniel Cotroneo dreamt of being a filmmaker. What started as silly movies in his hometown of Oakland, CA, turned into the real deal— working the lighting crew on sets like Mad Men, Star Trek: Into Darkness and Django Unchained. Whenever he could sneak close to the camera, he’d absorb the work of legends like Quentin Tarantino and JJ Abrams.

Years later, he began operating camera himself on three seasons of This Is Us (yes, he was probably handheld on a 65mm macro while you were crying). Daniel’s work behind the lens has sent him around the world, as Director of Photography on While We Live, Best Picture nominee in the Danish Academy Awards, and A Beautiful Life, a #1 global hit on Netflix in 2023.

Now, in 2025, in the face of Hollywood’s existential crisis, Daniel sees hope in the uncertainty. He’s jumping “lens-first” into independent features, launching his own production company, Flashback Pictures. With nine feature films slated for the next three years, his mission looks beyond big cash cow films based on tired IP. Hollywood has so much goddamn talent, but the industry has left too many of these storytellers on the sidelines. Cotroneo sees this as an opportunity, to tap into something, to do it differently, to make films that feel different, to leave you saying, “Damn, I never saw it that way before.” That’s the story Daniel wants to tell.

Whether he's 120 feet in the air with an ArriMax rigged to his condor, or behind the eyepiece capturing a single tear traveling down Mandy Moore’s cheek, it's all about finding moments- those moments that stick with you long after the credits roll and remind you why you fell in love with movies in the first place.

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