Matthew A. Cherry - Hair Love

Chicago native Matthew A. Cherry is a former NFL wide receiver turned filmmaker who played for the Jacksonville Jaguars, Cincinnati Bengals, Carolina Panthers and the Baltimore Ravens.

In 2007 he retired and moved to LA to pursue a career in entertainment landing work as a production assistant on over 40 commercials and as a director for over 20 music videos. Matthew received his first credit in 2008 when directed a music video for R&B artist Terry Dexter.

Since then he has gone on to direct music videos for Michelle Williams featuring Beyonce & Kelly Rowland, Tweet, Jazmine Sullivan, Lalah Hathaway, Kindred The Family Soul, Snoop Dogg, The Foreign Exchange, Bilal, N'Dambi, Maysa Leak, Dwele, Najee, K’Jon and Chloe X Halle.

In addition to directing music videos Matthew directed the short film entitled This Time starring Reagan Gomez-Preston & Terri J. Vaughn and recently released a new short film entitled Forward which premiered on Ebony.com. Matthew also writes & directs web series like the award winning series "Almost 30" and "Almost Home".

Matthew is also a feature filmmaker and first feature film The Last Fall starred Lance Gross, Nicole Beharie, Vanessa Bell Calloway Keith David, Harry Lennix and Darrin Dewitt Henson. The Last Fall made its world premiere at SXSW Film Festival and received awards at the African American Film Festival (ABFF) for Best Screenplay and Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival (MVAFF) for the HBO Best Feature Film Award. After a limited theatrical release The Last Fall was acquired by Image Entertainment in Fall 2012 and made its television premiere on BET in December 2012 and is currently streaming on Netflix Hulu.

Matthew's latest feature film 9 Rides premiered at SXSW 2016 in the Narrative Spotlight category and stars Dorian Missick, Omar Dorsey, Robinne Lee, Xosha Roquemore, Amin Joseph, Skye P. Marshall, Thomas Q. Jones & Tracie Thoms and is about a Uber driver who gets life changing news on New Years Eve. It was shot on the iPhone 6s.

Most recently Matthew directed upcoming episodes of the TBS series ‘The Last OG’ with Tracy Morgan and Tiffany Haddish, the CBS drama event series ‘The Red Line’ executive produced by Ava Duvernay & Greg Berlanti and the hit new ABC action comedy series ‘Whiskey’ Cavalier which stars Scott Foley & Laura Cohan. Matthew was also an executive producer on the Academy Award nominated film BlackKklansman from Spike Lee and is a Co-Producer on the TBS series The Last OG.

His current project is titled "Hair Love" and it is an animated short film about an African American father trying to do his daughters hair for the first time and he recently partnered with Sony Pictures Animation on the project.

Matthew works at Jordan Peele's production Company Monkeypaw (Us, Get Out, Twilight Zone) as a film and television executive. Matthew is represented in all areas at ICM Partners as a writer/director.

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