Olivier Matthon

Olivier Matthon is a French-Canadian immigrant, commercial mushroom picker, and documentary filmmaker who graduated with a B.A. from the Evergreen State College. He started documenting the lives of mushroom pickers in writing and photos in 2012. His story, Under the Radar, was published as a zine by Pioneers Press and in the anthology Writing American Culture by TESC Press. His photographs were published by High Country News Magazine in 2015 and exhibited at the Museum of Ethnography of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 2022. He is the director, cinematographer, and editor of Up on the Mountain, a feature-length documentary selected as the centerpiece of the 2022 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and that won the award for Best Northwest Documentary at the Tacoma Film Festival and an honorable mention at the Jean Rouch Film Festival in Paris. As of the fall of 2024, Olivier is editing a second feature-length documentary, from Port Townsend director Gabe Van Lelyveld, about homelessness, addiction, and mental health. He has lived in a rural town of 600 people on the Olympic Peninsula since 2006.