Christian Papierniak

Christian Papierniak is best known as the writer/director/producer of the award winning indie feature, "Izzy Gets the F*ck Across Town" as well as the Director/Producer/Designer of NBA2K's "My Career" story mode. "Izzy" was released in theaters across the US on June 22, 2018. Also that year, the screenplay for "Izzy" 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.

"Izzy" was the Best Narrative Feature Jury winner of the 2017 Tacoma Film Festival along with Best Actor (Mackenzie Davis). Mackenzie Davis was also Jury awarded "Best Breakout Performance" at the 2017 Napa Valley Film Festival. Other Nominations: 2017 American Film Festival, Best Narrative Feature (Christian Papierniak); 2017 Napa Valley Film Festival, Best Supporting Actress (Carrie Coon), Best Supporting Actor (Haley Joel Osment); 2017 Miami Film Festival, Best Original Screenplay (Christian Papierniak); 2017 Lone Star Film Festival, Closing Night Film; 2018 Guild of Music Supervisors Award, Best Music Supervision for a Film Budgeted Under 5 Million Dollars. The film world premiered "in-competition" at the 2017 Los Angeles Film Festival.

In 2014, Visual Concepts tapped Christian to develop and Direct, the first of its kind, completely immersive, narrative driven sports video game, NBA2K14 - It was showered with overwhelmingly positive reviews and 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, "The crown jewel of NBA 2K series is the incredible MyCareer mode... [It] is the gold standard when it comes to sports game story modes with impeccable production value, strong writing, and terrific animation" - Screen Rant. "The journey your player takes over his career is fascinating... A ridiculously deep mode, I just kept coming back to My Career again and again" -The Gazette. Papierniak continues his work on the NBA2K Franchise through it's 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".