For the last thirteen years Sytsma’s work spans Emmy winning commercial/documentary cinematography, investigative journalism, and documentary film direction. His voice in documentary focuses on the enslavement of sentient beings. After being trained as an experimental storyteller and cinematographer at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee he started working at the award winning documentary film company 371 Productions. After the completion of the Emmy nominated documentary, As Goes Janesville, Sytsma left 371 Productions to start Wood Grain Media, a documentary film company that supports a variety of types of filmmaking with an emphasis on Cinema Verite documentaries. He produced Wisconsin’s Mining Standoff for Al Jazeera English’s Television show Fault Lines while co-directing From Mass to the Mountain, a feature length documentary chronicling drought and deforestation in an unstable eastern Panama. Sytsma was the director of photography on When Claude Got Shot, an Independent Television Service(ITVS), the Ford Foundation, and Sundance funded film documenting gun violence in Milwaukee. The feature premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Executive produced by Snoop Dogg and directed by prolific documentarian Brad Lichtenstein the film aired on PBS’ national Independent Lens series winning an Emmy in 2022 for Outstanding Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. A major influence in his life is directing documentaries for The Station Foundation, a special operations rehabilitation and Gold Star sanctuary in Montana. In 2018 he received a Brico Forward Fund award from the Milwaukee Film Festival to finish his first Stolen Apes film. Stolen apes won best short film at EkoFilm, the Ireland Wildlife Film Festival, and best environmental film at the Zagreb Tour Film Festival in Croatia. The second Stolen Apes film, Stolen Apes - Buanoi, was recently tweeted by the singer Cher in an effort to relocate the only gorilla in Thailand from a shopping mall zoo. The third Stolen Apes film is a Lancaster University funded animation called Pongo the Stolen Orangutan: How law can heal. The short animation is based on the work of Jacob Phelps pertaining to holding illegal wildlife perpetrators accountable in the court of law. Sytsma currently sits on the board of advisors for the Freeland Film Festival, a film festival trying to rid the world of wildlife trafficking and human slavery. Colin is also directing/producing One Minute Remaining, a feature length documentary on what families of incarcerated people are going through during the COVID-19 pandemic. One Minute Remaining won a 2022 Brico Forward Fund worth $20,000.