For the last thirteen years Sytsma’s work spans Emmy winning commercial/documentary cinematography, investigative journalism, and documentary film direction. 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. In 2024 he was the director of photography on PBS’s Frontline special Two American Families, which won Best TV Documentary from the International Documentary Association. He produced 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. Colin is also directing/producing One Minute Remaining, a feature-length documentary about the experiences of families of incarcerated individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, scheduled to world premiere at the Milwaukee Film Festival in 2025.