—  About

We call attention to vision leaders and unsung pioneers of our time.

Stories Matter Media’s founder and director, Cassidy Friedman’s films have been called "powerful" by Mother Jones, "must-see" by The Mercury News, and "an audience favorite" by SF Chronicle. Our award-winning documentaries have premiered at festivals like Hot Docs, Cinequest, and Nashville and are widely available through our distributors, Lionsgate, Indican Pictures and Vision Video.

He directed the feature-length critically-acclaimed documentary, Circles (2018), which follows a dedicated high school counselor who struggles to balance the energy he pours into supporting his at-risk students and his relationship with his own son. (World Premiere Hot Docs; Winner Best Feature Documentary Covellite International Film Festival; Winner Best Feature Documentary Huntington Beach Film Festival; Winner Documentary Jury Award Special Mention Milwaukee Film Festival; Best Documentary Feature Nominee Nashville Film Fest; Official Selection Heartland International Film Festival; Virginia Film Festival; SF DocFest, and distributed by Indican Pictures).

He produced the documentary feature, Voices Beyond the Wall (2017), with Executive Producer James Franco, an Official Selection of the Miami International Film Festival; Winner of the Interfaith Award for Best Documentary at the St. Louis International Film Festival and Winner of the Frank Little Award for Self-Sacrifice and Social Change at Covellite International Film Festival, a coming-of-age story of girls in Honduras’ only orphanage for girls (distributed by Vision Video).

Cassidy has directed a score of documentary shorts, both independent and for clients, including Ambassadors of Hope (2023), which premiered at SCAD Savannah Film Festival, Finding Hope (2021), and Unstill Life (2014). He directed the docuseries, Detroit Rising (2020), with Producer Kerra Bolton, a columnist at CNN, which won Best Web Series at Cyrus International Film Festival, and received Special Mention for Best Documentary at the Venice Shorts Film Festival. And he directed the virtual reality experience, A-Block, US History, featuring slam poet champion, CeCe Jordan.

Through Stories Matter Media, he continues to make films that prioritize relationship, employ collaboration between filmmaker and film subject, and veer away from antiseptic plot lines in order to complicate narratives, and capture the authentic lived experiences of the characters.

He is in post-production on the feature documentary, Clarity, which follows the journey of a mixed race woman searching for belonging in a world increasingly divided by polarization and Black/White thinking.

He and his wife, Becca Vershbow, Stories Matter Media’s Impact Producer, dreamed up their company as an engine for high-impact stories that make us fall in love with the characters, break our hearts at the hurdles they must overcome, and model for us how we can turn the signature trait of our humanity, our empathy, into action, communicate across difference and reform the core American institutions that are not living up to our common values. 

Cassidy is a fellow of CIFF’s Points North Fellowship, Film Independent’s Fast Track program, and Film Independent’s Documentary Lab. His films have won grants from the International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorenz Doc Fund, Pacific Pioneer Fund and Center for Investigative Reporting. His prior work as a journalist earned him the Idaho Governor’s Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2009.
 

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Booking + Press

Director

Cassidy Friedman, San Francisco
email
+1 415 322 8047

Partnerships/bookings

Becca Vershbow, San Francisco
email
+1 202 210 6491

General Inquiries

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