Matt Finlin is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, [1] who is partner with Karen Barzilay in the Door Knocker Media film studio. [2] He is most noted for his 2024 film The Movie Man . [3] and his 2025 film Matter of Time. [4]
Born and raised in Cambridge, Ontario, [1] he studied psychology at the University of Guelph. [5] His student film Pipe Dreams was screened at the university in 2006. [5] He then spent some time working as an English as a Second Language teacher in Taiwan, [6] where he made the short film The Glass Box, about Taiwan's betel nut trade. [7]
He then spent some time living in New York City, where he released the film Below New York, a short documentary about the city's subway buskers, in 2011. [8]
Finlin founded Door Knocker Media in 2014 with producing partner Karen Barzilay. With the company, he worked as a director and producer of television specials and sponsored films for charitable organizations, including We Day specials, [9] and a posthumous tribute special to actor Leslie Jordan. [10]
The Movie Man, his feature documentary debut, premiered in February 2024 at the 39th Santa Barbara International Film Festival, [11] and had its Canadian premiere at the Kingston Canadian Film Festival. [3] The film received a Vancouver Film Critics Circle award nomination for Best Canadian Documentary at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards 2024. [12] Pete Hammond of Deadline dubbed the film "A Canadian Cinema Paradiso". [13]
In 2025 Finlin released Matter of Time, a film profiling Eddie Vedder's series of fundraising concerts to raise money for reseearch into a cure for epidermolysis bullosa. [14]