Filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, Whose Camera Championed the Forgotten, Dies at 65

Brian Lindstrom, the celebrated documentary filmmaker and husband of author Cheryl Strayed, has passed away at age 65 after a diagnosis of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). In announcing his passing, Strayed wrote that he died "the way he lived — with gentleness and courage, grace and gratitude for his beautiful life."

Lindstrom spent his career watching people closely, with patience and without judgment. His documentaries followed long-term drug addicts re-entering society, a man with schizophrenia who died in police custody and incarcerated mothers fighting to maintain bonds with their children. He didn't make films for audiences, he once said.

"I make them for the people in the film," Lindstrom told LA Progressive in 2018. "It is my small way of honoring them."

His 2015 documentary Mothering Inside followed participants in a program helping incarcerated mothers maintain bonds with their children — and when Oregon's Department of Corrections announced plans to cut the program's funding midway through filming, early screenings of the film galvanized the grassroots advocacy that ultimately saved it.

Strayed, who announced his diagnosis only weeks before his death, described their more than 30-year partnership as a stroke of "tremendous luck." He is survived by her and their two children, Carver and Bobbi. "He saw the goodness in everyone," she wrote. "He believed that we are all sacred and redeemable."