Meet Moon

Moon Molson is a Sundance, SXSW and Student Academy Award–winning director of urban narrative films.

Award-winning filmmaker

Moon's short films Pop Foul (2007), Crazy Beats Strong Every Time (2011), and The Bravest, the Boldest (2014) all premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, screened at over 250 international film festivals, and won more than 100 awards worldwide, including the Grand Jury Prizes at Palm Springs, South by Southwest (SXSW), and the Student Academy Award.

He was a selected attendee of the 2008 Sundance Screenwriters & Directors Labs, the 2008 Film Independent (FIND) Directors Lab, the 2015 Warner Brothers Television Directors' Workshop, and the 2016 FOX Global Directors Initiative as a Fox Director Fellow.

I am more of a fabulist than a realist. What I love even more than dialogues crafted from lyrical street language are films that express what David Lynch calls ‘the spirit of experimentation.'

Photo by Sundance
Photo by Ryan Collerd

Acclaimed artist

Moon was also named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in the Summer of 2007 and has received grants from The Jerome Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), and the Sundance Institute. Most recently, he was named a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow in Film-Video and a 2017 Pew Foundation Fellow in the Arts.

Master storyteller

Moon's films portray the stories of people of color using the language of the streets.

His work examines:

  • Urban poverty

  • Family dynamics

  • Trauma legacy

  • Cathartic violence

  • Masculinity concepts

  • Dysfunctional families 

  • Mental health issues

The Grand Rapids, Michigan-bred, Philadelphia-based filmmaker strives to strike a balance between gritty realism, vernacular lyricism, stark humor, and the surrealism of dreams and hallucinations.

Academy member & Princeton professor

Moon was inducted into the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences - Shorts & Animation Branch in 2017. He is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Princeton University, where he teaches undergraduate filmmaking and screenwriting.

Photo by Ryan Collerd