Wingspan takes flight at local film festivals
In Wingspan, a local filmmaker brings a Sebastopol wildlife photographer's work with condors home to Sonoma County
For filmmaker Matthew Fabiano and photographer Joshua Asel, the landscapes of Sonoma County have always been more than just a backdrop—they have been a source of inspiration, adventure and purpose. Growing up immersed in the region’s natural beauty, both Fabiano and Asel developed a profound love for the wild places that shaped them as children. Now, as adults, they channel that passion into storytelling, using film and photography to advocate for the protection of the world’s most fragile ecosystems.
Fabiano’s short film, Wingspan, is a portrait of Asel’s work as a wildlife photographer among the California condors of Pinnacles National Park. The film has already made waves in the festival circuit, recently screening at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival, Sacramento International Film Festival, where the film won for Outstanding Documentary, and The Green Film Festival of San Francisco, where it won the Audience Award for Best Short Film.
Now their journey comes full circle as they bring Wingspan to their hometown audiences at the Sonoma International Film Festival on Saturday, March 22, and the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival on Saturday, March 29.
Fabiano grew up in Sebastopol, where Asel now lives.
“It’s an incredible honor to have our hometown festivals welcome this film to their screens,” said Fabiano. “The landscapes that first inspired us to care about nature as children are the same ones that inspire our work today.”
Fabiano went to film school at San Francisco State, and after film school, moved to New York City for 11 years, where he worked as a producer and screenwriter, producing all kinds of content, from commercial television to advertising to music videos and then moving into documentaries.
But Wingspan, his newest documentary, is personal.
“This is a return to personal filmmaking for me, after making many other people’s projects for many, many years. This is the first time in maybe a decade that I’ve gone out and made something of my own,” Fabiano said.
“Over the years, my love for the natural world has kind of taken over my life,” he said. “First and foremost, my biggest passion, having moved back to Sonoma County, is just being in nature—so hiking, cycling, being in the outdoors. So putting those two together—my love for storytelling and the natural world—was a natural fit.”
Fabiano was working as a content director at Think Tank Photo, a camera bag company in Santa Rosa, when he met Asel.
“As I got to know him, his energy for all of the work that he was doing was completely infectious,” Fabiano said. “He was such a character and so animating and just inspiring that I was compelled to make a documentary about him.”
That’s how Fabiano ended up making a film about condors in Pinnacles National Park in the coastal mountains of Central California.
“He had been photographing, going to Pinnacles National Park for, I believe, six years,” Fabiano said. “He has taken countless trips up to the peaks of the Pinnacles, often in the dawn, leaving for the hike before sunrise in order to get up to the top, to be there when the condors are sunning their wings and kind of getting ready for their flights for the day. So he’d been doing that work for a long time, and seeing his photographs, I was like, I have to see this place.”
Fabiano, who lives in Petaluma, said he was interested in shining a light both on Asel’s work, the story of Pinnacles National Park and the critically endangered California condors. He also wanted to show what a day in the life of a conservation photographer is like.
“I was meeting so many wildlife and conservation photographers whose dedication to, you know, getting into a blind and sitting there for 10 hours in order to get that shot of that specific animal. It was just amazing the lengths they were going to,” Fabiano said. “And so we joined Joshua on a day at Pinnacles, starting pre-dawn, hiking to the peak with him, spending all day up on top of the Pinnacles in order to capture images of the condors.”
Asel wasn’t available to comment for this article because he was in the field photographing jaguars in Mexico, but in the press release for the film, he said, “The condor is a symbol of resilience, hope, and our shared responsibility to safeguard the wild. Telling their story is telling our own story—one of devotion to the land, to the creatures that inhabit it, and to future generations who deserve to experience these wonders.”
Wingspan is also a testament to the importance of wildlife photography.
“Joshua says it in the film. He says if he’s out there getting photographs of these animals, he’s proving that they still exist, that they’re still around, and that they’re still worth protecting,” Fabiano said. “And especially at this moment in time where our national parks are under assault, when the natural world is under assault, the importance of providing imagery, whether it’s photography or video, of what is actually happening, and showing that reality to people, has never been more important.”
Get tickets to the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival.
This is such an inspiring message to all who hold our natural world precious...😌❤️