Bio

Michael Bendeck is a Honduran-American filmmaker, born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. During his college years, he discovered his passion for photography and began making short films with a digital camera, editing his projects on a VHS recorder. In 2004, he was accepted into the Film Program at the University of Central Florida (UCF).

From early on, he combined his love for cinema and music, directing and shooting music videos for renowned Honduran artists such as Polache, Delirium, Ytterbium, and Nelson Pavón, helping shape a modern visual aesthetic within Honduras’ musical scene.

During his time at the university, he worked on several short films, including Cronofobia (2006), his first short to be screened at local and international film festivals. In August 2007, he released Rock Honduras, his first feature-length documentary, which was screened in Honduran movie theaters. The project was featured in the Spanish magazine Zona de Obras for its relevance to the country’s cultural and musical movement.

In 2009, he launched El Rock Show, a local television comedy program featuring political parodies and satirical short films. The show introduced the character El Paletero, who would later become the protagonist of his feature film of the same name. That same year, he worked as a camera assistant on the Honduran film Amor y Frijoles (Love and Beans). Later, in 2012, he made his debut as Director of Photographyin the science fiction thriller El Xendra. In 2013, he worked as a camera operator on the Puerto Rican comedy Mi Verano con Amanda 3.

Between 2012 and 2014, he organized the Cor3 International Short Film Festival, which showcased national and international short films, visual artists, and live music, held in the Caribbean paradise of Roatán (2012, 2013) and in Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa (2014).

In 2015, he began pre-production on his first fiction feature film, El Paletero, in which he served as director, co-producer, and editor. The film was both produced and commercially released within the same year, 2016, earning widespread praise from audiences and critics for its social narrative and independent visual style.

In the following years, he joined the technical crew of the documentary End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock, nominated for a 2022 Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Social Issue Documentary, a project that portrays the resistance of Indigenous women against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States.

Currently, Michael works as a Senior Video Editor and Cinematographer at AJ+, in Washington D.C. In 2024, he received his first Emmy Award, and in 2025, he was honored with an Edward R. Murrow Award, recognitions that reflect his commitment to visual storytelling and his continued contribution to journalism and documentary filmmaking.