Ben Masters
A native Texan, Ben Masters spent his college years attending school in the spring, leading horseback rides in Yellowstone during the summer, guiding Wyoming elk hunts in the fall and managing a ranch in South Texas over the winter. Traveling 3,000 miles on horseback, on wild mustangs adopted from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, he and three friends crossed the American West from Mexico to Canada. Masters documented his trip and the controversy concerning wild horses in Unbranded, an Audience Choice Award-winning film (Mountainfilm 2015) and book. Since then, he has launched a career in wildlife-based documentary filmmaking with Pronghorn Revival (Mountainfilm 2016), Wild Horse Resolution (Mountainfilm 2016) and Wildlife and the Wall (Mountainfilm 2018). In keeping with his past themes, he is the director of the feature-length film The River and the Wall and co-director of the short film Return of the Desert Bighorn (both at Mountainfilm 2019).