Raised in the volcanoes of Rwanda and the mountains of Nepal, Daniel is a director of narrative and documentary films based in New York City.
As a writer and director Daniel loves creating worlds for science fiction, horror, and fantasy films. His horror screenplay PARADISE won the jury award at Austin Film Festival in Fall of 2023. He has written and directed 10 shorts and a web series, receiving many awards including several for Best Directing. He recently completed his first narrative feature film, Eradication (2022) which was acquired at the Cannes film market and released as a Tubi Channel Original. It has enjoyed critical and commercial success, with a 100% critical rating on rotten tomatoes, and has twice been featured in the New York Times as a top 5 streaming Horror and top 5 streaming Science Fiction pick. Daniel directs genre films through his independent studio Dark Tower Films which he co-founded in 2014.
With a background in visual effects, Daniel takes a special interest in new storytelling technologies. His most recent short, The Lion and the Firebird (2022) pioneered the use of a Virtual Production workflow, a first for low-budget independent film, and was awarded the Sloan Science Production Grant. The short was shot entirely on a xRStage LED volume at Worldstage in Times Square, utilizing virtual environments created in the Unreal Engine as well as realtime dynamic lighting effects merging the virtual space to the real. He was subsequently selected as an Epic Games ICVFX Unreal Fellow and completed the fellowship in fall of 2022.
As a documentary filmmaker Daniel has produced short and feature films in over 60 countries - from tracking cartels along the rivers of Honduras to trapping snow leopards in the mountains of Afghanistan. His films have been featured on the UK Guardian, BBC, National Geographic, the Smithsonian Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, and three UN COP Climate Conferences. They have been selected at festivals including SXSW, DocNYC, Telluride Mountainfilm, the Environmental Film Festival and the International Wildlife Film Festival. His most recent wildlife film, Aguilucho: Dance of the Harpy Eagle (2021) won the Animal Film Award at the British Documentary Film Festival, Runner Up for Best Film at BANFF, and Best Short at the Eugene Environmental Film Festival, and was acquired by Kanopy and Ovid.tv. Daniel founded the documentary production company Skyship Films, focused on stories about wildlife, climate, and the rights of indigenous peoples.
Daniel is also a photographer with work featured on National Geographic, the UK Guardian, BBC, and Anthropology Now. See Daniel Byers Photography for more of his work.
Daniel is a graduate of Brown University with a BA in Screenwriting and Columbia University with an MFA in Screenwriting and Directing.