Michael Fearon (Director), Nadia Gill (Executive Producer), Dominic Gill (Director of Photography) | 2025 | 20 min.
2026 Official Selection
Leaving the Point takes an intimate look at a pivotal moment in Point Reyes National Seashore, just north of San Francisco. Since the 1800s, the region has been home to a resilient community of cattle and dairy ranches. When the Seashore was established in 1962, those operations were allowed to continue under an unusual arrangement of government leases. But now, under growing legal pressure from environmental groups, the ranches are being phased out. Leaving the Point amplifies the voices of Seashore residents, who are most impacted by the changes in Point Reyes National Seashore.
Michael Fearon is a documentary filmmaker & journalist from the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied filmmaking at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. His thesis film, Seasons, about an organic vegetable farm in New Jersey, won a Student Academy Award and was distributed by The New Yorker in 2022. Michael served as a field producer on multiple episodes of The Cabin Chronicles, produced by Blue Chalk Media and now streaming on MAX. While working at Encompass Films in Truckee, CA, Michael Co-Produced Planetwalker, a short documentary about the legendary environmentalist Dr. John Francis. The film was distributed by the LA Times and Bloomberg in 2024 and was shortlisted for an Oscar. Michael’s work has been shown at film festivals across the US including Mountainfilm, DCEFF, and Big Sky.
