One of Indie Wire’s “Top Ten Filmmakers You Should Know”

“I am a writer-director known for edgy, subversive dramas and dramedies about crime, sex, and family. A new-wave queer grounded in old-school storytelling, I empower and ignite viewers by exploring the conflicting, hilarious, tender corners of our messy human selves.” Carrie Schrader

WRITING

PHOENIX Drama TV pilot

Written by Carrie Schrader
Phoenix is a one-hour drama based on true events about a woman in the rural south who robs banks disguised as a businessman. When Phoenix and her lovable train-wreck of a best friend kidnap a newly sober ex-cop who has blown their cover, the ungainly trio must set out on an addiction-fueled race to outrun the law and their own tortured pasts.

SAVING CLARISSA

FEATURE FILM: In Development

Written by Carrie Schrader & Cheryl Williamson
Based on true events, Saving Clarissa is a drama about a dutiful wife and mother who finally pursues her long-lost dream of becoming a writer, but must face her past demons in order to save herself and her family from a deadly narcissist.

THIS I KNOW

FEATURE FILM: In Development

Written by Carrie Schrader and LaLa Halsema
Julia’s seemingly perfect life unravels when she’s forced to question her Evangelical community and sets off on a road trip of discovery with her teenage daughter.

THE GRIND Dramedy TV pilot

Written by Carrie Schrader
When Rachel Basi blows up her successful New York life, she returns to Atlanta, where she fights to transform herself and others by turning her father’s old-school sex toy shop into a sex-positive empire.

Biography

Carrie Schrader is an award-winning writer-director of short films, commercials, and feature-length films. She co-directed the short film “Don’t Mess With Texas” with Tricia Cooke and Ethen Coen (Coen brothers) and directed the Netflix commercial “Batdad: Battle For Bedtime” (Peacock, Amazon). She currently earns her living from multiple write-for-hire contracts, specializing in adapting real-life stories into film and television. Her latest is with A Really Good Home Pictures, who just debuted “Unstoppable,” produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

Her films have won film festival awards internationally, and she’s honed both leadership and collaborative spirit in the Orchard Project Episodic Lab, the Outfest Screenwriting Lab, IFP, and the Austin Film Festival. She is the creator of #nicewhitemom videos, which critically explore with comedy how white women perpetuate racism. Carrie has a ridiculously expensive but surprisingly useful MFA in directing from Columbia University and will be forever proud of her early days as a theater nerd.

DIRECTING