LOS ANGELES — After over a year on the international festival circuit, taking home 10 Best Documentary and Audience Choice Awards, as well as a unanimously acclaimed theatrical run earlier this year in the US and Canada, the film Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine is now available to purchase on DVD (SRP $19.99) and to rent or own on all digital platforms. The film was recently added to Netflix for rental.
Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine, Michele Josue’s debut and the first film helmed by someone from Matt’s life, is an intimate tribute to the young man she knew, the young man behind the story that rocked the nation and caused outcry around the world in 1998. Josue’s journey took her across the United States, Switzerland and Morocco and the heartfelt result has screened at over two dozen festivals worldwide.
Oct. 7, 1998, University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left to die because he was gay. Years later, Michele Josue, a close friend of Matt’s, revisits the shocking case with never-before-seen photos, rare video footage, as Matt’s all-too-brief life is remembered through the vivid testimonies of those whose lives he touched, from the friends and family who knew him best to the bartender who saw him on the night of the attack.
New revelations emerge in one of the most notorious hate crimes in US history, leading to a searing, poignant, and multi-layered biographical and sociological portrait. In the end, the notion of forgiveness–embodied in the moving and courageous final act of Matt’s parents–takes on truly heroic proportions.
