Matthew Mishory

Named a "rising talent" by Variety, filmmaker Matthew Mishory's work is celebrated for its exquisite visual style and expansive narrative language. Equally comfortable working in (and in-between) both documentary and fiction forms, he has told the stories of outsiders and visionaries who have changed the way we understand music, art, and history. Film International observed that "Matthew Mishory has managed to capture an austere beauty of a kind little known by all but the likes of Baudelaire." Matthew's 2018 film No Place of Exile, about the modernist composer and pianist Artur Schnabel, premiered on the Arte network. The film was shot in Switzerland, Italy, Vienna, and Berlin, utilizing unexpected textures (super8, drone footage, back-projection) and the great German actor Udo Samel to chart Schnabel's course through the emotional and physical landscapes of the European 20th century. His 2015 documentary Absent was filmed in the village of Marculesti in the remotest reaches of rural Moldova in the former Soviet Union. Designated a "must-see" film by Cineuropa, Absent is a cinematic portrait of the ghost village, its current inhabitants, and their very complex relationship to their own history. Cine Maldito named Absent one of the top ten films of the year. As a commercial director, Matthew shot the national "Powerful Performance" campaign for TCL, starring back-to-back NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo. It was featured on the 2019 Super Bowl broadcast and garnered over 19M views on YouTube. He teamed up again with Antetokounmpo for the 2020 "Enjoy More" campaign. Matthew has also directed (in Los Cabos) a surf campaign with pro surfer Tia Blanco as well as television and digital spots for top brands such as Turkish Airlines (on-location in Turkey, Serbia, and Romania), Pfizer, Roku, and Icelandic Glacial. Matthew's feature film debut, the 35mm Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean (2013) was released theatrically in the United States, the UK, and Germany. The San Francisco Chronicle declared Joshua Tree "sexy and mesmerizing", and Artorum pronounced it "a nuanced portrayal of an entire era." Previously, Matthew's short film, Delphinum, about the late artist Derek Jarman, was permanently installed in the British Film Institute's National Film Archive. The film was subsequently re-released in the UK by the BFI and screened at the Tate Britain museum in 2017. In 2018, Matthew began shooting the hybrid narrative-doc feature Mosolov's Suitcase in Moscow, with César Award-nominated actor Kirill Emelyanov playing the avant-garde Russian composer who was purged by Stalin in 1936. In 2021, he began shooting the feature documentary Who Are the Marcuses? for Stone Canyon Entertainment and Rhino Films.