Daniel Lago is a Hialeah native, though he tries not to show it. He used to work as a union camera assistant and has been making shoestring films for half his life.

In 2023, he completed his first feature film, “A Communist Brainwashed My Daughter” (ACBMD). Despite being made for less than $6,000 and with a three-person crew (Daniel took on nearly every role imaginable), ACBMD was selected to compete at the 41st Miami Film Festival in the Made In MIA Category. ACBMD is a satire about Cuban machismo, middle-school drama, and environmental messaging through connected vignettes. It screened to a sold-out theater and was well-received with attention to its relatable and authentic representation of Hialeah.

Since 2020, Daniel has worked with children and adolescents as an outdoor psychotherapist. He has too many interests outside of filmmaking: furniture-making, cartooning/comics, gardening, environmental stewardship, and taking stray cats to be humanely spayed, neutered, and vaccinated.

"Tropical Disturbance" is a longish-short film made with his family in 2019 and remixed again in 2021. 95% of it was shot with a telephoto macro lens. It's goofy and angsty.

"Your Pet? Your Child" is a 2020/2021 PSA about animal abandonment. It offended a professor he looks up to and he hopes it doesn't offend anyone else.

"Presence, Parenting, and Play" is a 2021 mockumentary about counseling an oppositional child with his oppositional Cuban dad and orbiting grandfather. It was shot on an old Angineux zoom lens, so there's a lot of zooming.

Having been a filmmaker since 2007, there are many shorts that will remain archived unless unearthed for the sole purpose of embarrassment.