Screenwriter · Writer-Director MFA · Los Angeles

Stories
about
grief.

Christopher Shank
Photo: Ryan Jensen @r.jensen_photography

Guilt, and the places that won't let us go. Character-driven horror, grounded drama, and emotionally intense genre stories.

Austin · Nashville · Vail · Richmond

"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."

7Completed Scripts
10+Festival Recognitions
MFAScreenwriting
— Featured Script All Work →
Feature · Horror / Drama

Nobody
Leaves

A man in a downward spiral has a one-night stand with a woman whose life quietly falls apart in his wake and ends — and the town, the guilt, and something older than either start collecting.

Comps: Hereditary · The Witch · Manchester by the Sea · A Ghost Story

Rewrite in Progress Request Script →
01
— More Scripts View All →
Feature · Drama / Thriller
The Reservist

A punk-rock Army reservist in a dead-end Missouri town receives his deployment orders on the anniversary of his brother's combat death — and has to decide whether the country that killed his brother deserves to have him too.

Feature · Drama
Standby

When her husband's estranged father is hospitalized with no prognosis, the wife — not the son — becomes the one keeping everyone together, while her own life quietly piles up around her.

Feature · Dark Comedy / Drama
The Battles of Birdtown

A musician comes home to a dying town to bury his brain-damaged mother and finds himself trapped between a sainted dead brother, a father who turned the family's grief into a monument, and a community that needs the story to stay the way it's always been told.

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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.

Contact →
Feature · Horror / Drama
Nobody Leaves

A man in a downward spiral has a one-night stand with a woman whose life quietly falls apart in his wake and ends — and the town, the guilt, and something older than either start collecting.

Comps: Hereditary · The Witch · Manchester by the Sea · A Ghost Story

Rewrite in Progress
Recognition
Available — Full script on request
Request Script →
Feature · Drama / Thriller
The Reservist

A punk-rock Army reservist in a dead-end Missouri town receives his deployment orders on the anniversary of his brother's combat death — and has to decide whether the country that killed his brother deserves to have him too.

Comps: Manchester by the Sea · Blue Valentine · Friday Night Lights · The Hurt Locker

Completed · Available
Recognition
Finalist — Richmond Film Festival, 2025
Request Script →
Feature · Drama
Standby

When her husband's estranged father is hospitalized with no prognosis, the wife — not the son — becomes the one keeping everyone together, while her own life quietly piles up around her.

Comps: Past Lives · Rabbit Hole · Mass · Pieces of a Woman

Completed · Available
Recognition
Available — Full script on request
Request Script →
Feature · Dark Comedy / Drama
The Battles of Birdtown

A musician comes home to a dying town to bury his brain-damaged mother and finds himself trapped between a sainted dead brother, a father who turned the family's grief into a monument, and a community that needs the story to stay the way it's always been told.

Comps: The Bear S1 · Ordinary People · Beautiful Boy · Short Term 12

Completed · Available
Recognition
AFF — Semifinalist
Inroads — Quarterfinalist
ScreenCraft — Quarterfinalist
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Feature · Drama
How to Disappear Completely

A year after their friend's death, two people who used to be each other's comic relief — one who can only grieve by joking, one who can no longer receive jokes as love — spend a weekend in the desert with the people they used to be, trying to find out if any version of their friendship survives what life did to it.

Comps: Rachel Getting Married · Mass · The Big Chill · The Humans

Completed · Available
Recognition
Second Rounder — Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Competition, 2025
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Short · Drama / Sci-Fi
Keep Driving

On the anniversary of his daughter's death, a rideshare driver accepts a late-night fare to the middle of nowhere — and spends the drive in conversation with a passenger who might not be human, discovering that the grief he couldn't speak to the living he's somehow able to speak to whatever this is.

Comps: Midnight Special · Aftersun · Thunder Road · Under the Skin

In Production
Recognition
Official Selection — Richmond International Film Festival, 2025
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Short · Drama
Me, The Dog, and The Dark Fog

On the night he's decided to end his life, a man is interrupted by a fog that shouldn't exist, a dog that won't leave, and the growing certainty that his dead brother sent both.

Comps: A Ghost Story · The Vast of Night · Lamb

Completed · Available
Recognition
Nashville — Semifinalist
AFF — Second Round
Vail — Quarterfinalist
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Additional Work Available

A selection of features, shorts, and pilots — including social thriller HERE FOR THIS and sci-fi drama THE TWILIGHT — available to industry professionals on request.

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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

On the anniversary of his daughter's death, a rideshare driver accepts a late-night fare to the middle of nowhere — and spends the drive in conversation with a passenger who might not be human, discovering that the grief he couldn't speak to the living he's somehow able to speak to whatever this is.

"This film started as a misread. I saw a trailer for Drive My Car and came away with a story that wasn't in the trailer at all — 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. One suicidal, one not far behind. It played Richmond in 2025 and something about the room told me there was more inside it.

So I went back in. Added a genre element, loosened the grip, let the story 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? And what do you do when the person asking you that question shouldn't exist?

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 IF 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 South 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 falls somewhere between character-driven horror and grounded drama. Not because I planned it that way, but because grief and dread occupy the same room in the human mind, and I'm not interested in pretending otherwise. 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, Vail, and Richmond. 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 with regular connections to Los Angeles. I'm always interested in thoughtful conversations about stories, collaboration, and what it means to make something that stays with someone.

Recognition

Get in Touch

For script requests, collaboration inquiries, or industry conversations:

chris@christophershank.com
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