David Gelb

You don’t just watch David’s films and shows... you experience them. Only a few years out of film school, David was a one-man production, flying alone to Tokyo to capture the story of Japan’s most renowned sushi chef, Jiro Ono.

A year later, David’s first documentary feature, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, created an entirely new visual language for documentary filmmaking, one that expanded sight and sound and unlocked every sensation for his audience: taste, smell and touch, and would go on to become the foundation for a collection of acclaimed series, starting with the original, and now iconic, Chef’s Table. 

As the longest running original unscripted series on Netflix, Chef’s Table reframed cooking as a genre unto itself, expanding a rich tasting menu of spin-offs that include Chef’s Table: France, Chef’s Table: Pastry and Chef’s Table: BBQ, as well as Street Food: Asia, Street Food: Latin America, Street Food: USA, Chef’s Table: Pizza and Chef's Table: Noodles. With each show's crisp structure, cinematography, elegant editing, shallow depth of field and razor-thin focus, bringing faces, food and ingredients into sharp relief, David’s signature vision branded a new style of filmmaking, embracing food as more than an art form, but a universal language. 

Whether exploring culinary artistry in a documentary like Wolfgang, profiling original celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, or chasing the history of the Ford Mustang in A Faster Horse, or how the Marvel Comics Universe has impacted and continues to influence popular culture around the world in Marvel 616 for Disney+, the range of David’s interests as a storyteller only matches the breadth of the mediums across which his stories are shared – from television to feature films to hybridized keynote events to digital and social media. David directed Obi-Wan Kenobi: A Jedi’s Return for Lucasfilm Ltd. and Disney+, a documentary featuring never-before-seen interviews and archival footage, celebrating the unique journey to introduce a classic character's new epic story that bridges the Star Wars saga films. His documentary on Stan Lee, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, chronicles the life and career of the acclaimed Marvel comic book creator. David’s most recent television work includes American Horror Stories.

Ever redefining the edges of the artform, David partnered with Apple to direct Poached, their first documentary short shot entirely on the iPhone 13 Pro, establishing a new level of versatility and intimacy using cutting-edge technology to tell the story of one big rivalry between two tiny Hainanese chicken rice kitchens in Singapore. 

As a commercial director, David has brought his singular, savory style to campaigns for clients that include Burger King, Chipotle, Apple, Bank of America, Chase Sapphire, Humira, Google and Intel.