Writer, Filmmaker, Emmy Award Winner; Writer, LIFE BY ELLA; Director and Star of CANCER REBELLION
About me
Hernán Barangan is a Filipino/Salvadoran filmmaker from San Francisco who writes elevated genre about rule-breakers who defy their limitations. As a wheelchair user, he defies them every day. His work has placed him in NBCU’s Launch TV Writer’s Program, Black List’s LatinXlist and Tracking Board’s NextList. As a writer on AppleTV+’s LIFE BY ELLA, he won an EMMY, a WGA Award and the Humanitas Prize for his episode “Prison or Palace.” It wasn’t his first EMMY nod either; previously he was nominated for THE 100%, a fully immersive interactive VR experience that he wrote and directed. It went on to win the Tribeca X award. He was first drawn to film while undergoing radiation treatment as a teenager — and he swore that he would grow up to change the way cancer is represented in movies. Making good on that promise, he directed and stars in CANCER REBELLION (Executive Produced by Roger Daltrey of The Who), for which he traveled to all 50 states to tell the stories of 100 young adult patients; driving enough miles to circumnavigate the Earth — twice. He’s also a marathon hand-cycler, has rebuilt a Volkswagen from the ground up and makes a damn good green smoothie.