After 18 years producing nature documentaries — including a Sundance audience award winner picked up by National Geographic — Matt knows firsthand how broken independent film distribution has become. That's exactly why he co-founded Wild Commons.

For decades, documentary film distribution followed a familiar path: film festivals, sales agents, broadcast deals, and—if you were lucky—a streaming platform acquisition. But today, that model is rapidly evolving.

For filmmakers, the challenge isn’t telling meaningful stories—it’s finding where those stories belong. Here’s why more filmmakers are choosing to publish their work within a collective designed specifically for science and nature storytelling.

The path to making a nature documentary has changed. Today’s filmmakers can not only produce their own films, but distribute them on their own terms—reaching audiences directly and sustaining their work over time.