Matt Johnson
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Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’s Matt Johnson Shares His Secret to a Good Life
Matt Johnson is the center of attention wherever he goes. He’s especially popular in his hometown of Toronto, where his advocacy for young Canadian filmmakers and warm, self-referential humor have made him one of the city’s most favored sons. Mayor Olivia Chow was in attendance when Johnson and his co-star/co-writer Jay McCarrol brought their film Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie back to Toronto for a TIFF Midnight Madness screening that Jonson calls “one of the foundational moments of my adult life.” After years of attending the festival, he “wanted so badly to share that same kind of joy […]
by Katie Rife on Feb 13, 2026 -
Trailer Watch: Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry
Following his 2016 feature Operation Avalanche and re-launching Nirvana the Band the Show in 2016, director Matt Johnson returns with BlackBerry. The film, co-written by Johnson and longtime producing partner Matthew Miller, was adapted from the book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff. The film’s short synopsis reads: BlackBerry tells the story of Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the two men that charted the course of the spectacular rise and catastrophic demise of the world’s first smartphone. Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton star as Lazaridis and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 15, 2023 -
Beyond Telefilm Canada: Curating the Future of Canadian Film at VIFF’s “Future//Present”
What does a Canadian film look like? This could be construed as a bad joke with limitless punch lines, the film equivalent of “a man walks into a bar…” But this query isn’t meant to drag my own national cinema, which has produced great filmmakers like Alanis Obomsawin, David Cronenberg and Michael Snow. Instead of a set-up to a gag, this line of questioning opens a conversation about the future of Canadian cinema, especially when it comes to funding. This topic was front of mind at the Vancouver International Film Festival this year, which debuted a new program, curated by […]
by Kiva Reardon on Oct 27, 2016 -
To the Moon Via Stanley Kubrick: Matt Johnson on Operation Avalanche
Nothing on screen is ever fully truth. Even in the most honest and seemingly unbiased documentaries, manipulation and subjectivity reign. That caveat is accepted when there is explicit knowledge that one’s watching creative content, but blatant deceit is a much dangerous affair. In Operation Avalanche, director Matt Johnson travels in time to 1967 to ingeniously recreate and humorously speculate about some of the most divisive footage in American history, moving images that surely change the landscape of what humanity was capable of. For some, however, the moon landing is an orchestrated sham built on the artifice of moviemaking. Johnson’s sophomore […]
by Carlos Aguilar on Sep 20, 2016 -
Sundance Dispatch 1: Morris From America, Operation Avalanche and NUTS!
Chad Hartigan’s Morris From America has an unpromising logline, but so did his previous feature, This is Martin Bonner (an unlikely friendship between two men looking for redemption etc. etc.), and that turned out pretty well, so I wasn’t worried. Morris is a coming-of-age crowdpleaser, in the vein of “it’s been 18 years since Rushmore, but this version is different because…” (Son of Rambow, Submarine, et al.). I know a lot of people (I’m one of them, no shade implied) who find a deep satisfaction in action movies novel only in their details and crispness of execution while placing no value upon originality per se. That’s a principle which, of […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 23, 2016
