Trey Edward Shults

Trey Edward Shults was an independent filmmaker whose debut feature, "Krisha," screened at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Shults always wanted to make movies for a living. He had his first brush with Hollywood stardom when the iconic director Terrence Malick came to Texas to begin principal photography on "The Tree of Life" (2011). Shults quickly secured an internship on the film, where he received a crash course in Moviemaking 101. After his work on "Tree of Life," Shults decided to finally put his experience to good use and try his hand at directing. He wrote and directed two short films, "Mother and Son" (2010) and "Two to One" (2011), but neither advanced his film career any future. Then in 2014 Shults wrote and directed his third short film called "Krisha." The film debuted at the 2014 South by Southwest Film Festival where it wowed audiences and received the prestigious Special Jury Award for Narrative Short Films. Given the unexpected success of "Krisha," Shults decided to make a feature version of the film. There was just one problem - he didn't have any funding. With that in mind, Shults took to the crowd-funding website Kickstarter where he quickly secured the finances to shoot the feature-length version of his movie. The feature length version of "Krisha" premiered a year later at the 2015 South by Southwest Film Festival, where it took home the Grand Jury Award. Several weeks later "Krisha" was part of a select group of films to screen at the Cannes Film Festival.