A Warm Springs guide follows the Deschutes River through four seasons — carrying a family legacy, and proving that the most meaningful path is rarely the easiest one.
“We wanted this to be a love letter to the Deschutes — and to breathe.” RA Beattie · Director
The Hard Way earned a 2025 Emmy nomination — and traveled far beyond fly fishing. It screened at the Fly Fishing Film Tour, the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival (Canadian premiere), BendFilm, INKAFEST, the McMinnville Short Film Festival, Native Reel Cinema, and We Are Home — reaching outdoor, Indigenous, regional, and independent-film audiences alike.
A guide and enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Matt has spent his life learning what the river gives freely — and what it demands in return.
Spring runoff, summer heat, fall color, winter stillness. The film follows Matt across a full year on the Deschutes, refusing to manufacture constant success. Steelhead stay elusive, as they are in life — and the long stretches of watching, walking and waiting become the point.
Matt’s grandfather is remembered as the first Native American guide on the river. Rather than simply inherit that identity, Matt built his own — through work, setbacks, and years on the water. Guiding here isn’t a job description. It’s belonging.
The film opens in Ichishkiin, spoken by Chief Jefferson Greene — a living Warm Springs language with roughly fifty fluent speakers left. Stewardship arrives the same quiet way: planting willows, clearing trash, gathering with family. Conservation as habit, not a speech.
The title works on every level — difficult methods, an elusive fish, a year-long shoot, and a life assembled through persistence. The river’s deepest reward isn’t a number or a trophy. It’s the relationship built through effort and attention.
Arian Stevens is a foundational part of the Off the Grid Studios team — and a big reason this film looks the way it does. A few of his frames from the river.
Follow @arianstevens on Instagram →
The story doesn’t end on screen. Matt guides the river he’s known his whole life — through his own outfit, Spin the Handle. Book a day on the water with him: steelhead, trout, and the kind of local knowledge that takes a lifetime to earn.
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