Founders

Matthew Millan

For a filmmaker, Matthew boasts a truly unconventional background. Born into a Coast Guard family, he grew up in several places, but spent his formative years exploring the Ko’olau Mountains of Oahu, and the Steinbeckian backwoods of Central California. From his mother, Matthew inherited an unquenchable sense of adventure, and from his father an undying love of science that would amalgamate into the cornerstone of his adult life. By the time he graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz, he had already undertaken treks through the wilds of three continents while still graduating with a Bachelor of Science in physics, and receiving special honors on his senior thesis for investigating a groundbreaking hypothesis of the origin of Gamma Ray Bursts.

After spending 10 months traveling throughout Eastern Europe, Matthew moved to Silicon Valley where he worked as an engineer for several years. Unfulfilled by this vocation, he co-founded 180 Films with his college lab-partner. Since then, he has built an eclectic portfolio of narrative films, music videos, commercials, educational series, and documentaries. His work has steered him to some of the most challenging places in the world, from the barren peaks of Ladakh, India to the northern stretches of China. To date, his films have premiered in nearly 50 festivals worldwide, and have garnered a myriad of accolades.

Over the years, Matthew has honed a unique ability to uncover extraordinary stories of individuals, and use them as a lens into global events. When the Arab Spring erupted in North Africa, he traveled to Libya in 2011 to witness the uprising against Colonel Gaddafi firsthand, and uncover such a lens. While there, he investigated the story of a man whose heroic sacrifice led to the liberation of Benghazi from Gaddafi’s yoke, culminating in his award-winning short documentary We Win or We Die. Inspired by the burgeoning music revolution that he witnessed firsthand, he ended up living in Benghazi for a year to document what he described as a music bloom in the shifting sands of The Great Desert. The result is the award-winning high-octane rock & roll documentary Stronger Than Bullets, which premiered on Al Jazeera English in 2016, and has won numerous awards.

Since his completion of Stronger Than Bullets, Matthew has worked on a variety of ambitious projects. Through the summer and autumn of 2016, Matthew collaborated with a former Congressman and a local Evangelical Church to create a series that builds a bridge of understanding between American Christians and Muslims. In 2017, he traveled with renowned journalist Micheal Kirtley first to coastal Morocco to document a music festival featuring an eclectic mix of top musicians from around the world, and then to the balmy shores of Togo to illuminate the ancient religion of Vodun through the eyes of a high priest.

Currently, Matthew is working on Beyond Borders, a globe-trotting adventure series that aims to take on the axioms that dominate civilization. The first ten episodes, with topics ranging from the refugee crisis to the myths that still endure in modern times, will be released by the close of 2018.