Matthew Puccini


Matthew Puccini is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker. He is known for his short films that deal with LGBT-related subject matters. These include The Mess He Made Marquise, Dirty and Lavender, the last of which was acquired by Searchlight Pictures for an Academy Award-qualifying theatrical run following its Sundance premiere. His work has played at several festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Aspen Shortsfest, Palm Springs ShortsFest, and Outfest Los Angeles.

Life and career

Puccini graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2015 and went to work for “an extremely demanding producer,” in order to make The Mess He Made. The film premiered at SXSW, where it became a finalist for the Iris Prize. This gave Puccini enough leverage to create a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund Lavender, which he then produced a couple of years later, starring Michael Hsu Rosen, Ken Barnett and Michael Urie. The film was nominated for both Sundance's Short Film Grand Jury Prize and Vimeo’s Best Drama of 2019, and won the Here Media Award for Best Queer Short Film at the Provincetown International Film Festival.
His most recent film, Dirty, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Jury Award for Best Short Film, and then screened virtually at SXSW, in which the physical screening was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the film still got nominated there for the Grand Jury Award for Narrative Short and received a Special Jury Award for the performances of the film's two stars, Manny Dunn and Morgan Sullivan. It then went on to play at BFI Flare, Outfest Fusion, Atlanta Film Festival and the Palm Springs ShortsFest.
Puccini, as of now, still resides in Brooklyn, and is currently in development on his first feature film and in post-production on the short documentary, Queer/Elder.

Filmography