Christopher Munch

Christopher Munch is an American writer-director-producer. Self-taught in filmmaking and a native of Southern California, he began making films as a youngster. He is the son of astrophysicist Guido Münch and writer Louise Fernandez. His 2020 feature, The 11th Green (2020), a New York Times Critic’s Pick, utilized a bold, hybrid form to speculate on the folklore of UFOs and presidents, and has become increasingly timely since its release. Several of Munch’s previous features played at Sundance, and his first, The Hours and Times (1991), a speculative biopic of Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein, won a special jury prize there. A micro-budget production that was shot in Spain, The Hours and Times went on to wide critical acclaim in the U.S. and England. An impossible dream was the overarching theme of Munch’s second feature, the sprawling period drama Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day (1996), based on a true story Munch had read as a child of a young trolley mechanic who tries to save a doomed short-line railroad to Yosemite National Park. Its award-winning cinematography — by Munch’s frequent collaborator, Rob Sweeney — was inspired by the early landscape photography of Carleton Watkins. More than a decade later, Munch returned to a majestic landscape with Letters from the Big Man (2011). Shot in remote parts of southern Oregon, and set against the backdrop of a controversial fire salvage, it received wide attention for its groundbreaking, realistic take on the mythology of Sasquatch-Bigfoot. Munch’s other features have included The Sleepy Time Gal (2001), which starred Jacqueline Bisset in the acclaimed role of a mother at the end of her life seeking to reconnect with a daughter given up for adoption at birth. He is a past Guggenheim fellow, recipient of the Wolfgang Staudte Prize at Berlin, winner of two Independent Spirit Awards including the “Someone To Watch” Award, and has been featured in two Whitney Biennial exhibitions.