Documentary
Our award-winning documentaries are audience favorites at festivals, like Hot Docs, Cinequest, Nashville, SF DocFest, Milwaukee, Miami, Heartland, Virginia and many more, and are being distributed by studios like Lionsgate, Indican Pictures and Vision Video.
Features
CIRCLES
A Hurricane Katrina survivor who works to keep Black teenagers in school in Oakland, California finds his personal and professional lives colliding when his 15-year-old-son goes to jail for a crime he didn't commit.
Called a “must-see” by The Mercury News, and “an audience favorite” by SF Chronicle, CIRCLES held its World Premiere at 2018 Hot Docs. It went on to win Best Feature Documentary at Covellite International Film Festival and Huntington Beach Film Festival, Best Documentary Jury Award Special Mention at Milwaukee Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at Nashville Film Festival. Follow the film on Facebook.
Dir. Cassidy Friedman
A Stories Matter Media Production. Studio: Lionsgate. US Distributor: Indican Pictures.
(TRT: 81:36)
VOICES BEYOND THE WALL
Rescued from the streets of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, murder capital of the world, orphaned girls find their voices in poetry as they heal traumas of their past and prepare to transition into an uncertain future.
Executive Produced by James Franco, directed by Brad Coley and produced by Cassidy Friedman, VOICES held its World Premiere 2017 Miami Film Festival where it was reviewed as “Eloquent…engrossing and intimate” by The Hollywood Reporter. Interfaith Awards Best Documentary 2017 St. Louis International Film Festival. Frank Little Award 2017 Covellite International Film Festival. Most Creative Documentary 2017 International Christian Film Festival.
A Stories Matter Media Production. US Distributor: Vision Video.
(TRT 90:00)
In Post-Production: SOLEDAD
A group of inmates inside one of California’s most violent and overcrowded prisons painfully seek rehabilitation through a radical process of cathartic storytelling.
Produced by Oscar-award winner, Glen Zipper, Sean Stuart and national prison reform advocate and CNN Commentator Van Jones. Directed by Cassidy Friedman.
A Stories Matter Media Production.
Please help us complete this important film with a 100% tax-deductible donation!
Shorts
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Through Harambee Arts, a group of Kenyans holds space for children in Kibera slum to express themselves freely. Among these dedicated mentors is Samson, who grew up in Kibera himself. He is the main character in this 18-minute film.
Since premiering at the Savannah Film Festival in 2023, AMBASSADORS OF HOPE is now screening around the world, raising funds for Harambee Arts and inspiring wide interest in expressive arts therapy.
AMBASSADORS OF HOPE (2023)
In the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, expressive arts gives hope, meaning and self-expression to children’s lives.
The film won the 2024 Dan Eldon Activist Award and premiered at Savannah Film Festival in October 2023.
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Called “illuminating” by The Mercury News and the film to see at the San Francisco Independent Short Film Festival, the series won Best Web Series at the Cyrus International Film Festival, the Audience Choice Award at New Hope Film Festival, Special Mention in Documentary Filmmaking at the Venice Shorts Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary Short at Nassau Film Festival and Best Unscripted Web Series at the New Jersey Web Festival.
Co-produced with Kerra Bolton, and executive produced by Ted and Susan Wachtel.
DETROIT RISING: HOW THE MOTOR CITY BECOMES A RESTORATIVE CITY (2021)
A disillusioned ex-pat writer explores the impact of Detroit’s black-led, grassroots efforts to restore relationships, repair harm and build social capital in classrooms, courts, and executive boardrooms.
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FINDING HOPE enjoyed its world premiere in January 2021 at The Film Collective’s showcase of independent filmmakers, received an honorable mention at the Nassau Film Festival in Princeton, NJ, was nominated for Best Documentary Short at New Hope Film Festival and was an official selection of Media Film Festival and Flicks 4 Change. Co-produced with Kerra Bolton, and executive produced by Ted and Susan Wachtel.
FINDING HOPE — IN THE FACE OF RELAPSE (2021)
An investigative journalist reporting on a youth treatment program in rural Pennsylvania discovers not everything in this quiet suburb of Philadelphia is as she expected.
Screenings by request.
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Selz offers a unique window into the glamour and destruction of the times: the gallery openings, wild parties and affairs that defined one of the most celebrated periods in American art history.
Like the art he loved, Selz’s father was vibrant and freewheeling, but his enthusiasm for both women and art took its toll on family life. When her father left MoMA and his family to direct his own museum in California, marrying four more times, Selz’s mother, the writer Thalia Selz, moved with her children into the utopian artist community Westbeth. Her parents continued a tumultuous affair that would last forty years.
UNSTILL LIFE — A MEMOIR BY GABRIELLE SELZ (2014)
Poignant and candid, Unstill Life is a daughter’s memoir of the art world and a larger-than-life father known as Mr. Modern Art.
Free streaming on Vimeo.
360° Immersive Experiences
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CECE JORDAN — A-BLOCK, US HISTORY
Stand with Oakland's award-winning slam poet and teacher CeCe Jordan while you experience her intensely moving poem "A-Block, US History." You're with her in a classroom at Oakland's high school of last resort, which serves the teens who are falling through the cracks of the our public school system. It's rare to have a direct experience of being so close to such a masterful artist whose energy is so huge that you'll feel the heat (and the spit) as you begin to comprehend the magnitude of what faces teachers and students who are trapped in a system that considers our children to be "checkboxes of at risk behavior" instead of our sisters and brothers.
A Stories Matter Media collaboration with Wisdom Teachers VR
© Stories Matter Media LLC
