#216 Rafel Duran - Director of Cyborgs Among Us

Today we are talking to Rafel Duran, the Director of the documentary “Cyborgs Among Us”. And we discuss the underground world of human augmentation, how advanced bionics is bringing us one step closer to real cyborgs, and what human-machine interaction will look like as we advance into the future.

All of this, right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

PARK CITY, UT - JANUARY 22: Filmmaker Rafel Duran Torrent is awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Focus Forward, GE and Cinelan Awards Event featuring "Girl Rising" at The Shop during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2013 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Sonia Recchia/Getty Images)

About Rafel:

I'm a freelance journalist and filmmaker based in Barcelona and Berlin, with Bachelor’s degrees in Audiovisual Communication and Journalism from Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona. After starting my professional career in Barcelona in production in film and advertising, I later moved to Miami in 2004 where I continued working in production for major Spanish media company Grupo Prisa affiliate Plural Entertainment, which produces content for Univision -the largest Spanish-language network in the United States-, Telemundo and WSBS-Mega TV. There I also worked as assistant editor and video editor for docu-realities, magazines and show games. As a freelancer, I also produced the independent documentary La Gata-The nine lives of a tango singer (Best US Documentary Award in the Women’s International Film Festival, Miami, USA, 2008).

Afterwards, I worked in post production for television magazines, documentaries and reports produced for different TV channels and for the Argentinian Ministry of Information in Buenos Aires. I later collaborated with an international human rights NGO in a conflict zone in Colombia, contributing to the communications department.

I directed, produced and edited the short film documentary Cyborg Foundation, which won the $100.000 Grand Jury Prize in the Focus Forward Films Competition about world-changing innovation, awarded at Sundance 2013. The jury included actress Daryl Hannah and filmmakers Barbara Kopple, Jose Padilha, Joe Berlinger, Floyd Webb and Peter Wintonick. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival alongside documentary shorts by Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), Lucy Walker (Wasteland) and Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens). It was also screened at Tribeca Film Festival and Doxa Documentary Film Festival in 2013.Cyborgs among us (2017) is my first feature documentary, co produced between Spain and France with the collaboration of Science & Vie TV (France) SVT (Sweden), NRK (Norway), DR (Denmark). It has been selected in several international documentary festivals and it has been broadcasted in more than 20 countries worldwide. I actually freelance as a video reporter and documentary director.