Christian Papierniak is a multi-talented writer, director, producer, and designer, best known for his work on the award-winning indie feature film "Izzy Gets the F*ck Across Town" and the Director/Producer/Designer of NBA2K's "My Career" story mode.
"Izzy" was released in theaters across the US on June 22, 2018, and the screenplay was permanently added to the Core Collection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library as one of the best of the year 2018.
The film won several awards, including the Best Narrative Feature Jury award at the 2017 Tacoma Film Festival, along with Best Actor (Mackenzie Davis),and Best Breakout Performance at the 2017 Napa Valley Film Festival.
"Izzy" was also nominated for several awards, including the 2017 American Film Festival, Best Narrative Feature; the 2017 Napa Valley Film Festival, Best Supporting Actress (Carrie Coon) and Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment); the 2017 Miami Film Festival, Best Original Screenplay; and the 2017 Lone Star Film Festival, Closing Night Film.
Additionally, the film was the winner of the 2018 Guild of Music Supervisors Award, Best Music Supervision for a Film Budgeted Under 5 Million Dollars.
In 2014, Visual Concepts tapped Christian to develop and Direct the first of its kind, completely immersive, narrative driven sports video game, NBA2K14, which was showered with overwhelmingly positive reviews and was named "Game of the Year" by VGX and IGN.
He returned for NBA2K15 and NBA2K18 to shepherd the creation of the first "open world" concept for a sports video game entitled, "The Neighborhood", with NBA2k19 Papierniak once again expanded the genre and upped the cinematic scope, starring Anthony Mackie, Michael Rapaport, Haley Joel Osment, Ricky Whittle, Aldis Hodge, Rob Huebel (among many others),the game was an overwhelming critical and financial success.
Papierniak continues his work on the NBA2K Franchise through its most current version.
In 2023, he directed the music video "I'm Sorry For Always Apologizing" for popular indie-punk band Skating Polly, continuing his collaboration with similar bands of this genre such as Bratmobile, Pure Bathing Culture, and Heavens to Betsy.
For television, Christian has created and executive produced pilots for ABC, NBC, Fox, Sony, ABC Family, and Lifetime. In film, he has worked as a writer and directing consultant for Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros/New Line, Lion's Gate, Disney, and Fox Searchlight.
While still in Grad School at AFI, he was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "Top 25 New Faces of Independent Film".
