Craft Leaders: Natasha Braier, Cinematographer

“I consider myself more an emotional poet than a narrator, in a way, so I tend to gravitate to the filmmakers who also have that approach,” says Natasha Braier ASC ADF. “You can be more poetic with the image and let the viewer complete the picture.”

The Argentine cinematographer has tended toward edgy or lyrical material for directors including Sebastián Lelio, Lynne Ramsey and Nicolas Winding Refn.

“I’m attracted to someone with a strong visual personality because I feel with them that I have the freedom to do something more visual and poetic and less tied to conventional storytelling,” Braier says.

She’d made up her mind to be a cinematographer by her late teens. An early interest in photography translated to a passion for film and after her family relocated from Buenos Aires to Barcelona when she was 18, Braier began to study for a career by taking a Masters at the National Film and TV School in Beaconsfield, UK.

“We were encouraged to take 16mm cameras out at the weekend and shoot whatever wanted,” she tells IBC365. “We had all the resources to experiment with but on an artistic level I felt like an alien there. Perhaps I was too experimental. I felt a degree of frustration…