Matthew Ross

Matthew Ross is an award-winning director, screenwriter and journalist from New York City. Ross made his feature-length debut as writer-director with Frank & Lola (2016), a "psychosexual noir love story" starring Michael Shannon, Imogen Poots, Michael Nyqvist, Justin Long, Emmanuelle Devos, and Rosanna Arquette. The film made its world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where the critical reaction was overwhelmingly positive, including a 4-star review in The Guardian. Two days after its first public screening, Universal acquired worldwide rights to Frank & Lola, and released the film theatrically and on VOD later that year. His other writing and directing work includes the festival shorts Lola (2006), Red Angel (2007), and Curtis and Clover (2001); the 2010 viral video Inspired by Bret Easton Ellis (2010), commissioned by Ellis and Random House, commissioned by Ellis and Random House and described by film critic Roger Ebert described as "one terrific video"; as well as more than 50 episodes of FIGHT! Life, an online documentary series about professional fighters, which has logged over 6 million YouTube views. Ross was a story consultant for Larry David's HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000), including contributing plotlines to the DGA award-winning episode "Palestinian Chicken", which Vanity Fair called "the crowing achievement of the entire series." He has also written and rewritten screenplays for Anonymous Content, Radical Studios, Palmstar Entertainment, Sundial Pictures, and Infinity Media, among other companies. As a journalist, he has held staff editor/writer positions at a number of print and online publications, including Variety, Filmmaker, Indiewire, FIGHT!, and The Aesthete. His freelance articles about film, culture, sports, and politics have appeared in Playboy, The Village Voice, Nerve, Humanity magazine, and the Criterion Collection, among others. In October, 2013, Playboy published his first longform investigative feature, "Inside El Rodeo," an 8,000 story about a young American documentary filmmaker's imprisonment in Venezuela. His 2006 Filmmaker article on Steven Soderbergh's Bubble (2005) was included in the 2015 edition of Interviews: Steven Soderbergh (University Press of Mississippi). Ross was a Directing Fellow at the Sundance Institute's Feature Filmmaking Labs and a board member of the IFP's Program Advisory Board. He has also hosted the Independent Film Channel's IFC in Theaters series, and appeared as a commentator/panelist for CNBC's Independent Spirit Awards coverage and HDNet's Inside MMA. He has also moderated panels and served on the jury at dozens of film festivals and events, including the Sundance Film Festival, the Sundance Institute at BAM series, IFP's Independent Film Week and No Borders programs, among others. He graduated Cum Laude with Honors from Harvard University. He is represented by the William Morris Endeavor agency and MGMT management. He lives in Brooklyn. (Bio current as of late 2016.)