Matthew A. Cherry (born December 13, 1981) is an American film director, writer, producer, and former American football player.

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, Cherry 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. Cherry received his first directorial credit in 2008 for a music video featuring R&B artist Terry Dexter.

Since then, Cherry has gone on to direct music videos for various artists, including Michelle Williams featuring Beyoncé & 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, Cherry directed the short film titled “This Time,” starring Reagan Gomez-Preston & Terri J. Vaughn and recently released a new short film titled “Forward” which premiered on Ebony.com. Matthew also writes & directs web series like the award-winning series “Almost 30” and “Almost Home.”

Cherry is also a feature filmmaker and his 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 in 2012 and received awards at the American Black 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 and made its television premiere on BET in December 2012 and is currently streaming on Netflix and Hulu.

Cherry’s latest feature film “9 Rides” premiered at SXSW in 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. The film, about an Uber driver who receives life-changing news on New Year’s Eve, was shot entirely on an iPhone 6s.

In television, Cherry has directed 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, the ABC action-comedy series “Whiskey Cavalier” which stars Scott Foley & Laura Cohan, CBS’ “The Unicorn” and most recently, ABC’s hit series “Black-ish.”

Cherry also served as an executive producer on the Academy Award®-nominated film “BlackKklansman” from Spike Lee while working as a film executive at Jordan Peele’s production company, Monkeypaw Productions.

Content: Matthew A Cherry

Photo: Chicago Sun-Times