Matty Rich


Highly regarded as one of the pioneers of Black Filmmakers, Matty Rich burst onto the Hollywood scene in the early 90’s, gaining major recognition as 19, year old acclaimed writer/director/ producer with his award-winning film “Straight out of Brooklyn, when mega director Jonathan Demme discovered Matty during an editing session for “Silence of the Lamb”. 

He immediately took him under his wing and the movie went on to be a huge success winning the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize Award for his critically acclaimed film “Straight out of Brooklyn” in which he was wrote, directed, produced and acted in. Samuel Goldwyn Films distributed the movie theatrically. The film would go on to win the Independent Spirit Award, the NAACP Image Award and The Producer’s Guild Award. Shortly thereafter, Matty was inducted into the Directors Guild of America (DGA) by African American Hollywood icons Sidney Poitier and Bill Duke.

From there, Matty then landed a development deal with Tri-Star Pictures under the helm of studio chief, Mike Medavoy, and later signed a three-picture deal with then-studio chief, Jeffrey Katzenberg at Disney where he directed the summer splash, “The Inkwell”, which to date is a black film classic. Staying true to his pioneering spirit, in the mid 2000’s, Matty accepted an offer from video game giant Ubisoft to serve as their Creative Director/Artistic Director for the video game 187 Ride or Die. Rich packed his bags and headed for Paris. During this time, Matty traveled back and forth between Hong Kong and Seoul Korea where he would write and direct cinematics.   

Returning to his filmmaking roots, Matty wrote, directed and acted in a 10-minute teaser for his upcoming supernatural television series C-U-R-E. The teaser had a private screening at the Sundance Film Festival 2020 and receive rave reviews.  With the promise to deliver the grittiness that made him famous, Rich recently teamed up with Rapper T.I. to star in his upcoming Thriller “Caller 100”.

Currently, Matty Rich serves as a film & television writing/directing advisor for the Sundance Film Festival Co//AB on-line platform and also, as an independent consultant for the Associate Dean of San Diego State University in their film, television and diversity department.

Matty has been a featured speaker in prominent Entertainment conferences, including as official host for the AT &T Gaming & Technology Exhibition during the 2014 BET Awards, Variety Magazine’s Entertainment Summit, Variety Magazine’s Gaming Summit, Variety Magazine’s Mobile Gaming Summit, Variety Magazines 3D Summit, Bloomberg Financial Entertainment Summit, THE DEV youth video game summit, Comic Con 2019 as featured speaker on the Augmented Reality/Comic Book panel, and is currently a featured speaker & instructor for Sundance Film Festival Co//ab. Comic Con (2019) Featured Speaker on Augmented Reality/Comic book Panel.