RYAN SUFFERN is a Grammy-winning and Emmy-nominated filmmaker with over 15 years of experience in documentary storytelling. His work spans music, sports and social impact, consistently grounded in character-driven narratives with a strong emotional core.
As a director, Suffern helmed the award-winning Finding Oscar, which Steven Spielberg executive produced in association with USC Shoah Foundation. Suffern also co-directed and produced Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story, which won a Grammy for Best Music Film. Suffern directed the two-part documentary Mr. A & Mr. M: The Story of A&M Records, along with A Final Cut For Orson: 40 Years in the Making, documenting the finishing of Orson Welles’s final film.
Suffern has produced numerous other documentary titles, including Adaptive, Watershed, Satan & Adam, The China Hustle, the Emmy-nominated docuseries Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time, and he’s currently producing a feature doc on renown bodybuilder and fitness influencer Chris Bumstead (aka CBUM). Suffern also served as an executive producer on The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart; McCartney 3,2,1, The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash, Omoiyari: A Song Film by Kishi Bashi, The Space Race, Rather and Papertown.
After teaming up with Frank Marshall on ESPN’s award-winning Right to Play, which Suffern edited and helped to film, he went on to co-found the documentary division for The Kennedy/Marshall Company, which he headed up until 2021. Suffern has produced and/or directed documentaries for Netflix, HBO, Disney+, Hulu, Peacock, Sony Pictures Classics, Magnolia Pictures, MTV Docs, ESPN, EPIX, NatGeo, YouTube Originals, Vice Sports, Logo, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. In the branded space, Suffern has also produced shortform documentaries for Carhartt and Autodesk.
Suffern is originally from the Chicago suburbs and was an English major at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. After college, Suffern cut his teeth in the film industry, working as a set PA in Chicago’s independent film scene. He eventually came to Los Angeles in 2002, continuing as a set PA, until he was fortunate enough to earn a spot as one of Steven Spielberg’s assistants. While working for Spielberg, Suffern had the responsibility of documenting the behind-the-scenes for four different films, which was essentially the beginning of his documentary filmmaking career.
Suffern is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America. He is repped by the United Talent Agency.