Backstory
Kris is passionate about “getting’ it done”. He has directed a number of award…
Wait… Backstory!
“Jaws” – He saw the movie when he was young. At that point Kris knew what he wanted to be when he grew up – a Cop! You know, so that he could hunt sharks and save the day. Imagine his shock when he found out that, NOPE, police officers don’t do that. From there the logical step to ‘what Kris wanted to be when he grew-up was obviously a Marine Biologist. So he could save sharks. However, this profession, required a good head for Mathematic. Hmmm Math… Next.
Around the time of BACK TO THE FUTURE and the GOONIES Kris started to understand that what he wanted to be, a film director. Besides the question: what does a director do? He had it - BLAM! A film director - Kris going to make movies!
Now for the Bio stuff:
Kris was born on May 25th 1976 in Ottawa. He attended the Drama Program at Canterbury School for the Arts and later attended Ryerson University’s Film Studies program, in Toronto, where he was able to focus on his one true love – storytelling. While at Ryerson Kris produced and directed several films earning him the Norman Jewison Filmmaker Award two years consecutively, for the shorts “Two of the Same” (1999, 8min.) and “No Man’s Land” (2000, 25min.). Out of school Kris has gone on to direct four additional short films, including: “Girl on the Side of the Road” (2002, 18min.), “The Clock is Ticking” (2003, 25min.), “Safe” (2004, 24min., OMDC Calling Card) and “For All the Marbles” (2006, 12min., Best Canadian Short film – World of Comedy Film Festival; Youth Jury Prize for Most Inspirational Film – Reel 2 Real Festival; Silver Gryphon award for best Kids Short Film - Giffoni Film Festival; Audience Award - Durango Inter. Film Festival 2010).
In 1999 Kris co–founded the production company Shoes Full of Feet, through which Kris is developing feature films that he is slated to direct: “Mistletoe”, “The Leftover Bandit”, an official project of the National Screen Institute’s Features First program, and “Schooled”. Kris has also stayed involved in the Toronto film community by being a jury member for local film festivals. For Kris’ feature film debut “At Home By Myself… With You” he co-created a new production company, Pocket Change Films, to raise the film’s production budget entirely on other peoples pocket change. ‘At Home’ premiered at the 2009 Vancouver International Film Festival and was voted by the audience as one of the top ten most popular Canadian films at that festival. ‘At Home’ was also chosen by Telefilm Canada to attend the 2010 Marché du Film at the Cannes film festival as part of the Canadian Perspectives 10. Next it travels to the Nickel film festival in June 2010.
Kris currently lives in Toronto, Canada.
(phew… try say that three times fast.)