Hello! My name is Matthew Boyd and I am the director, and cinematographer of Barren Grounds. For the last twenty years, I have served as the cinematographer on over 50 narrative short and feature-length films. Recent work has been featured on Netflix, HBO Documentary Films, Showtime, theatrically, and in film festivals worldwide.

Currently, I am working as the cinematographer on two documentary features. One is the story of Zona Roberts, the 103 yr old "Grandmother of the Disability Movement", and her son Ed Roberts, recognized as the "father of the independent living movement", and the other, about Silvia Vasquez-Lavado, a Peruvian-American explorer, mountaineer, social entrepreneur, author, and technologist. My recent short, A Boat for My Brother, won three Best Documentary Short awards, and my latest short, Way of the Shepherd has played at 20 film festivals and also won three awards so far.

Barren Grounds will mark my feature-length directorial debut, and this time I will have the backing of an incredibly talented, veteran filmmaking team whose work has been featured at Berlinale, Visions du Réel, SXSW, Hot Docs, CPH:DOX, Sheffield Doc/Fest, as well as on The New York Times Op-Docs, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, and all of the top networks.

Barren Grounds is a historical outdoor-adventure documentary that explores themes of coming-of-age, friendship, nature, survival, and loss. Incorporating thousands of feet of 16mm film captured throughout the journey in the summer of 1955, the audience will be taken along the same path of the Subarctic canoeing expedition that resulted in the death of the group's leader, Art Moffatt. The film will showcase the unforgiving land of imponderable majesty in this untouched corner of the world; its flora, and fauna, and the indigenous peoples of the region, the Cree and the Inuit. Nature and wildlife will play a character alongside the six men whom the story is about. 

We will hear from authors, experts, family members, and the three surviving members of the expedition themselves. The audience will also learn about the geological and hydrological history of the land as they are entertained by a story that takes these men "to the lip of the abyss that separates sanity from insanity and life from death. It is a first-hand exploration of this uncertain edge that provides the profound insights that make this a most powerful and unique narrative."

After its film festival run, we will explore educational sectors and aim to secure a streaming contract with one of the top streaming companies including Netflix, HBO, National Geographic, and Apple TV to name a few.

For more information about the film go to the website - https://www.barrengrounds.com/