Brian M. Cassidy & Melanie Shatzky are collaborative artists working at the intersection of narrative and documentary cinema. Known for their hyper-intimate films about individuals in post-industrial landscapes, their works explore themes of loss, incarceration, mental illness, environmental upheaval, and the human-animal bond. 

Their films have screened at festivals and museums around the world including Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, Locarno and Rotterdam film festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, The National Gallery of Art, Le Musée de la Civilisation, ICA London, The Museum of the Moving Image, The Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, and Lincoln Center. 

Cassidy & Shatzky are 2026 Guggenheim Fellows and have also held fellowships at MacDowell and Yaddo. 

Their feature debut, FRANCINE, starring Academy Award winner Melissa Leo, was nominated for a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director. The film was called “raw, intimate and observed with penetrating acuity” by The Hollywood Reporter, and was selected as a New York Times Critic’s Pick. The Playlist described their documentary, THE PATRON SAINTS, as “truly poetic” while POV Magazine called it “one of the most powerful Canadian documentaries of recent years.” Their most recent work, A MAN IMAGINED, produced by the National Film Board of Canada, was selected as the opening night film of Montreal Critics’ Week and was described by Le Devoir as an act of “unheard-of, almost subversive tenderness.”