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 a short documentary for Carhartt and and the award-winning shortform series, Built to Move, for 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.