Writer / Director / Producer
A native New Yorker, Roy Szuper initially started working in live music production where he found the topic for his first documentary Concert Joe: A New York Story. A fusion of comedy and music inspired by “This is Spinal Tap,” the film follows one man’s ridiculous quest to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for seeing the most concerts. The film was featured on MTV and VH-1.
Szuper’s next short film was a more personal story titled Charcoal that was based on an event that happened to his family in the days after 9/11. It screened in Cannes and Buenos Aires in 2007.
Szuper’s first feature, Gonzo Music Diaries, NYC started as a documentary about subway musicians and morphed into the story of the staging of a music festival 9 days before the start of the Republican National Convention. The film follows the music and activism leading up to the RNC and documents New York’s transforming music, cultural and political landscapes. Featuring Tom Morello, Michael Franti, Vernon Reid, and CGGB’s founder Hilly Kristal. Gonzo was screened at Anthology Film Archive’s New Filmmakers Series, CBGB’S, Vision Du Reel DocFest in Switzerland, IDFA in Amsterdam, Cannes and Buenos Aires.
Szuper has also worked as a producer on a feature length documentary titled Edge Codes, a film about the history of film editing featuring George Lucas and Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorceces’ editor. Szuper’s documentary short Revolution in Motion, about a car that runs on air, was profiled in the Daily News in 2009.
After a brief stint producing factual content, where he had development deals at My Tupelo Entertainment and JV Productions, he refocused on writing.
Szuper’s work at The Metropolitan Opera was his inspiration for “Madhouse,” a farce about an opera company. There was a staged reading of the work in 2016 and it is currently being developed as a feature length film.
Szuper has recently finished his first novel titled “Love Letters from the Abyss”, which is loosely based on his life as a single father in New York.
Szuper finished shooting his first narrative feature, Can’t Let It Go in early 2023. CLIG is a dramedy about five different relationships and how they were affected during the 2016 election. It is Executive Produced by his long time mentor, Academy Award winner James Ivory.