Biography

Matthew Thorne (b. 1993, Adelaide / Kaurna Country) is an Australian filmmaker, photographer, and artist.

His work often involves long-term collaboration with communities and their Country, and explores contemporary Australian identity, and it's colonial inheritance, spiritual life, masculinity, and relationship to land.

His film Marungka tjalatjunu (Dipped in black) (2023), co-created with Yankunytjatjara artist Derik Lynch, received the Silver Bear Jury Prize and Teddy Award at the Berlinale, the Documentary Australia Award at Sydney Film Festival, and Best Short Documentary at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

His moving image installation Extraction (2024), co-created with Kuyani/Kokatha storyteller Donna Waters, was commissioned by Samstag Museum of Art and Creative Australia, and premiered at Adelaide Film Festival.

Matthew was selected for the Directing strand of Berlinale Talents (2026). He has three feature films in development: Flatlands, a mythic coming-of-age story set in the outskirts of Adelaide; One road in / One road out, a hybrid documentary following five weddings across five coal-mining communities; and Ngayulu (I / Me), a direct documentary made with Derik Lynch.

He has contributed unit photography and additional direction to Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant (2017) and Justin Kurzel’s Ellis Park (2024), and photography to Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2019), Danny and Michael Philippou’s Talk to Me (2023), and Shalini Adnani’s Our Share of Sand (2026). He also contributed photography to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ album Ghosteen (2019).

Matthew has published two photo books: For my father (Palm, 2017), a book of photographs made with his father in Japan shortly before his father’s sudden death, and Jingo was born in the slum (Jane & Jeremy, 2021), documenting Kurzel's retelling of the iconic Ned Kelly settler myth. He also co-produced the ARIA-nominated soundtrack album The Sand That Ate The Sea (Mercury KX, 2019) with composer Luke Howard.

His work has been exhibited at the Hamburg Triennial of Photography (2026), Chaillot Théâtre national de la Danse, Paris (2024), Lagos Photo Festival, Nigeria (2024), PHOTO Festival, Melbourne (2024), and the Art Gallery of South Australia (2020), among others.

Awards include the Martin Kantor Portrait Prize (2023) and Australian Directors’ Guild Award for Music Video (2021). And nominations for the C/O Berlin Ulrike Crespo Photography Prize (2026), the Olive Cotton Photography Award, Australia (2023), the National Portrait Prize, Australia (2021), and the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, UK (2020).

Matthew lives and works between Athens and Adelaide.

He is represented by GAGProjects / Greenaway Art Gallery.