Brian Lindstrom

Brian Lindstrom was an acclaimed American documentary filmmaker whose lens found dignity in the lives others too easily overlooked. Born on February 12, 1961, in Portland, Oregon, to a working-class family — his mother a bartender, his grandparents divorced, his father working in a grocery store — Brian became the first in his family to attend college. He graduated from Parkrose High School and went on to earn a degree in Communications from Lewis and Clark College in 1984, where professor Stuart Kaplan lit the filmmaking spark that would shape his entire life. He paid his way through school with student loans, work-study jobs, and summers spent at a salmon cannery in Cordova, Alaska. He later earned an MFA in Screenwriting and Film Directing from Columbia University, then returned to Portland — the city that never let him go. Beginning in 1994, Brian taught youth filmmaking programs at the Northwest Film Center, using video as a tool of empowerment for at-risk young people. It was a calling that ran parallel to his own documentary work: films that looked unflinchingly at addiction, incarceration, mental illness, and police brutality, always with compassion at the center. His most celebrated works include "Finding Normal" (2007), "Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse" (2013), "Mothering Inside" (2015), and his final film, "Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill" (2024), which was named Documentary of the Year by the Docnroll Film Festival. "Finding Normal" holds the singular distinction of being the only film ever shown to inmates in solitary confinement at Oregon State Penitentiary — not, as Brian was quick to note, as a punishment. He met Cheryl Strayed in 1995 and married her in 1999. Together they raised two children, Carver and Bobbi, whom he loved with the same boundless generosity he brought to everything he did. Known for his gentleness, his humor, and his profound belief that every person is sacred and redeemable, Brian described his life's work simply: making films "for the people in the film," as his small way of honoring them. Brian Lindstrom died on May 15, 2026, at age 65, from progressive supranuclear palsy. His wife and children held him as he took his last breath. He is remembered as a filmmaker who erased the X that society puts through lives — with his camera, and his astonishing heart.