Grief doesn't resolve. Neither does good drama. MFA · Atlanta

Stories
about
grief.

Christopher Shank
Photo: Ryan Jensen @r.jensen_photography

Guilt, and the places that won't let us go. Grounded drama, dark comedy, near-future sci-fi, social thrillers, adaptations, and horror — different registers for the same unfinished business.

Austin Film Festival · Nashville Film Festival · Vail Film Festival · Richmond International Film Festival · Atlanta Film Festival

"I'm drawn to stories about grief, guilt, and the places we won't let go — and the people who force us to face them."

13Completed Scripts
20+Festival Recognitions
MFAScreenwriting
— Featured Script All Work →
Feature · Horror / Drama

Nobody
Leaves

Still carrying guilt over ignoring his suicidal brother's final calls, a young man hits and abandons another desperate stranger on a rain-soaked road; ten months later, her ghost begins calling, forcing him to choose between the life he rebuilt and the truth buried in the woods.

A grief-driven supernatural thriller built around one call he cannot ignore.

Completed · Available
01
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Feature · Relationship Drama
Miles Apart

A struggling husband runs the Honolulu Marathon beside the wife who plans to leave him, hoping 26.2 miles can save their marriage before the finish line becomes the end.

Feature · Near-Future Sci-Fi Drama
SoulEcho

In the near future, a grieving husband uses an AI service to reconstruct his dead wife, but when the model reveals she may have been planning to leave him, he must choose between preserving the version he needs and accepting the woman he never fully knew.

Feature · Ensemble Drama / Dark Comedy
Brickhaus

After a former infantryman dies by suicide, the men who served with him reunite at his rural cabin to clean out his life - only to discover that the brotherhood they mythologized may be the thing keeping another one of them alive.

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Selected Work — Scripts Available for Option, Rights, or Commission

Selected
Works

Character-driven horror, grounded drama, and intimate genre stories rooted in grief, guilt, and the places we can't escape.

Christopher Shank at work
Photo: Ryan Jensen @r.jensen_photography

Industry professionals — scripts available on request. Always open to conversations about stories.

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Writer-Director

Films

"Short films are where story, style, and performance collide. They're the proof."

Keep Driving cinematic reference image
Still from Midnight Special
In Production

Keep Driving

Short · Drama / Sci-Fi

He keeps the car moving because stopping means letting the thoughts catch up, and fuck that. His daughter's gone, but she's still riding shotgun, heavier than any guilt I've ever carried. Another year, another night that never ends, the city gnawing at itself like it always does. He picks up some stranger, because what else is there to do? The car shrinks, the air turns to soup. He spits out words he never managed to say when she was alive. Now they just hang there, dead weight, two assholes in the dark, both chasing ghosts that probably never existed.

Keep Driving started as a misread. I saw a trailer for Drive My Car and came away with a story that wasn't in it — a driver, a passenger, a night that doesn't end where it's supposed to. What I wrote first was simpler: two people trying to save each other over the course of a long ride. It was an official selection at Richmond in 2025 and something about the reaction told me there was more inside it.

So I went back in. Added a genre element, loosened the grip, let it breathe into stranger territory. What came out is something I'm more afraid of — which usually means I'm on the right track. Two men, one night, a destination that turns out to be a question. What does it mean to stay? What does it mean to go back?

We've self-greenlit this film. We're doing a sweded version first — part storyboard, part rehearsal, part test — so we understand every cut before we call it a locked shot. Then pre-production, a crew, locations, cast. The goal is Richmond 2026, Atlanta, Austin, and Sundance if we make something worth the submission fee.

  • ✓Script locked (V16)
  • ✓Self-greenlit
  • ✓Production partner confirmed
  • ✓Richmond International Film Festival 2025 — Official Selection
  • Sweded version (storyboard/rehearsal run)
  • Pre-production
  • Location scouting
  • Casting
  • Principal photography
  • Post-production
  • Festival submissions

Target festivals:
Richmond · Atlanta · Austin Film Festival · Sundance (if warranted)

Budget:
Self-financed (lean festival version)

Actor-Driven

Performance is the architecture. Everything else — the frame, the cut, the score — exists to protect what happens between two people when the scene stops pretending.

Controlled Tension

Suspense lives in restraint. The shot that holds a beat too long. The line reading that doesn't land where you expected. Pressure that builds in silence and pays off in something quieter than an explosion.

Emotional Specificity

I'm not interested in general sadness. I want the specific texture of grief at 11:37 PM on a Tuesday, driving to nowhere because driving is easier than stopping. That specificity is what makes a story feel like it happened to someone real.

Journal — Not a Newsletter. Not a Brand. Just the Thinking Between Drafts.

Journal

"What would the fifty-two-year-old version of me beg the thirty-seven-year-old version to do?"

Christopher Shank writing
Photo: Ryan Jensen @r.jensen_photography
Christopher Shank

About

Christopher Shank portrait
Photo: Ryan Jensen @r.jensen_photography

I write about grief because I haven't figured out how to stop.

Most of my scripts start the same way — someone in a room they should have left, carrying something they can't put down, circling a truth they already know but won't say out loud. That's not a formula. That's just what keeps coming out when I sit down to write.

I grew up in the Midwest and I've spent enough time around dead-end towns and masculine silence and the particular way families avoid the things that are killing them to know that those aren't regional specifics — they're universal. Everyone has a place they can't go back to and can't stop thinking about. I make films about those places.

The work moves through grounded drama, dark comedy, near-future sci-fi, social thrillers, adaptations, and horror. Not because I set out to build a range, but because grief and guilt change shape depending on the room. My comps tend toward Aftersun, Manchester by the Sea, Hereditary — films that trust the audience to sit with something unresolved and find meaning in the unresolvedness.

I hold an MFA in screenwriting. My scripts have been recognized by Austin Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival, Vail Film Festival, and Richmond International Film Festival. I'm currently in pre-production on Keep Driving, a short film I'm directing that began as a misread of a foreign film trailer and evolved into something I'm more afraid of than anything I've written — which usually means it's working.

I'm based in Atlanta. Los Angeles knows my name.

I'm always interested in thoughtful conversations about stories, collaboration, and what it means to make something that stays with someone.

Christopher Shank — Screenwriter and Writer-Director

Recognition

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