01 / Work
Work
Features, shorts, series, and experiments. Different forms; a persistent interest in people, power, and the rules of the room.
In post-production
01—06Atomic Fondue
At the height of the Cold War in 1973, when the President and Soviet premier disappear, a planeload of resourceful Air Force wives must avert World War III while contending with infidelities, spies, martinis, and fondue.
Hot Minute
When a broke rideshare driver is forced to drive two fraternity brothers’ getaway car, she turns their half-baked crime spree into an unlikely business opportunity and her best shot at escaping a dying North Carolina mill town.
The Tenth Circle
In the absurdly bureaucratic Tenth Circle of Hell, a carefree slacker and a tightly wound perfectionist clash and connect as they confront the flaws that landed them there.
Love Me Tender
An experimental documentary filmed through real-time rehearsals over three days in Los Angeles, adapted from Tom Holloway’s play and inspired by Euripides’s Iphigenia at Aulis.
Trash People
In Los Angeles, a young woman overwhelmed by the debris of modern living is pulled into an unexpected game of cat-and-mouse after she catches a stylish stranger sorting through her garbage.
Unseen Borders
In Medellín’s Comuna 13, women activists and survivors confront the legacy of paramilitary violence, femicide, and historical silence while reclaiming their community’s narrative.
Completed + released
07—11East of Middle West
A teenage runaway and a widowed father each fight to take matters into their own hands to redeem their dark past.
Layaway
Left by their mother to fend for themselves, two siblings in Iowa learn to live by their own code, until a choice becomes a secret that tests their trust in each other.
#millcore
An absurdist sketch-comedy web series following a group of millennials who become friends after one Tinder swipe right.
Freytag’s Pyramid of Climactic Light
A hand-processed 16mm work that uses images associated with NC-17 cinema and violent PG-13 soundtracks to interrogate censorship, ideology, and the politics of looking.
In the Search Bar of Lost Time
Blending Proustian memory with algorithm-driven mobile advertising, the film examines how digital systems manipulate desire, commodify time, and reshape the self.
Screenwriting + development
12—17god's favorite angels
After years of addiction and estrangement, a woman returns to her college town for a friend’s wedding, only to find her group chat of misfit friends dragging her into the same reckless patterns she is desperate to escape.
Canyon Heights
When an 18-year-old skater-influencer becomes the unlikely breakout star of a chaotic prestige reboot set against a rapidly changing Los Angeles, the older sister who raised and manages him follows him west, where sudden fame, sex, anxiety, ambition and a volatile found family begin dismantling the sibling relationship that has defined both of their lives.
Soft Launch
A status-obsessed Chicagoan’s plans to inherit his father’s empire derail when a surprise half-sister claims half the estate, leaving him stuck navigating sibling rivalry, identity crises, and the business of growing up.
Up in Flames
A disgraced journalism student seeks a fresh start in Hollywood with her estranged college friends, but their lives spiral toward one wrong move that could leave them and everything they know up in flames.
The Pedalphiles
After getting dumped and losing his estranged uncle in the same night, a directionless military veteran and NYU finance student inherits his uncle’s independent punk recording studio in Brooklyn along with a chaotic indie band that expects him to manage its future.
Hawk River
When a recovering addict returns to her Iowa hometown after her long-missing brother is found alive under mysterious circumstances, she and her twin sister uncover a family legacy of psychological experiments, buried trauma, and a sinister cult that blurs memory, dream, and reality.
Earlier work + other roles
Acting, writing, image-making, continuity, sound, and production work also shaped the way I work with a crew.
Browse earlier credits
10:15 on a Saturday Night
An office worker struggles to quit smoking as he comes to terms with his position in work and life.
30 Tabs
A young woman who sells for her family’s drug ring begins to question her lifestyle after the death of a person involved with one of her clients.
Additional Postage Required
A space courier who can hear conversations tied to the mail they carry becomes entangled in adventures, conspiracies, and connections across the stars.
Adieu: An August to April Romance with Agency
A first-person documentary following a year of gaining and losing a sense of agency through performance art, acting in a web series, and writing and directing a short film, told through voice messages and footage from those experiences.
Cahiers du Mania
A found-footage, first-person documentary tracing the portrayal of mental health in mainstream Hollywood narrative films and the filmmaker’s perception of it.
Charcoal Skies
When a reclusive eleven-year-old boy ventures from the solace of his bedroom, he experiences more than he bargained for.
Contraband, USA
A historical-investigative documentary sparked by the discovery of seven hexagonal coffins beneath the Neuse River Bridge, examining the Contraband Smallpox Hospital, Black refugee communities, epidemic death, and contested Civil War memory in New Bern, North Carolina.
Dean
A deliveryman agrees to help a customer with an act of deception for extra cash, only for it to become increasingly unclear who is deceiving whom.
Domicile
A young graphic designer’s search for their first home is complicated by an unsettling gift from a secret admirer.
Groundwater PSA
A public-service campaign for the World Water Film Festival translating groundwater advocacy into concise broadcast storytelling.
GUMBO
A crumpled gum wrapper journeys across the gentrified sidewalks of DUMBO, Brooklyn, dodging hipsters, pigeons, and existential dread while offering a wry glimpse at the neighborhood’s transformation.
Guns from the Top
A moving-image analysis of biopower in the volleyball scene from Tony Scott’s Top Gun, adapting ideas from Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality.
Heart of Nature
A narrative short featuring Kai Swanson as Klara Moore.
Jane
A moving-image narrative interpretation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, slowing the pace of images to explore the unreliability of human perception.
Lo/ve
A narrative short featuring Kai Swanson in the role of Woman.
Mallburn, IA
A young woman leaves Chicago and returns to her Iowa hometown to help her twin brother raise their teenage brother, only to discover that their oldest brother, thought to have died seven years earlier, might still be alive.
#millcore2
The second season expands the absurdist world of #millcore and its millennial ensemble.
Nova Nightmare
An animated short executive produced by Kai Swanson.
Painting with Light
An experimental video essay adapts John Alton’s 1949 cinematography writing to interrogate how lighting conventions participate in the representation and objectification of women.
Prey
A young girl reaches out to a local pastor with magical abilities as a means of helping her mother heal from cancer, at a price.
The Assventures of Buttman
In the city of Gotass, one billionaire hero rises with his cheeky antics and brawny behind to keep crime at bay.
Thinly Veiled
Isolated, directionless and desperate for connection, an all-American teenage boy loses himself in the dark corners of the internet while searching for purpose.
Water You Talking About
A short-form environmental comedy connected to water advocacy and the World Water Film Festival.