General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Krisha

Krisha is a 2015 American psychological drama written and directed by Trey Edward Shults in his feature-length directorial debut. It stars Shults's real-life aunt, Krisha Fairchild, as an estranged woman in her sixties who returns to her family's Texas home for Thanksgiving after roughly ten years away, hoping to make amends for the damage caused by her past addiction and self-destructive behavior. The film is an expansion of Shults's 2014 short film of the same title, and it won both the Grand Jury Award and the Audience Award for Narrative Feature at the 2015 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Trey Edward Shults, born 1988 in Houston, Texas; his first feature³
Lead cast	Krisha Fairchild (Krisha), Robyn Fairchild (Robyn), Billie Fairchild (Grandma), Trey Edward Shults (Trey), Bill Wise (Doyle)⁴
Production	Shot almost entirely in Shults's parents' house in Texas over nine days, with a largely family cast and crowdfunding financing⁵^•⁶
Premiere and release	Premiered March 16, 2015 at SXSW; screened in the Critics' Week section of Cannes 2015; released theatrically by A24 on March 18, 2016⁷^•⁸
Major awards	SXSW Grand Jury and Audience Awards (2015); John Cassavetes Award, Independent Spirit Awards (2016); Best Directorial Debut, National Board of Review; Best First Film, New York Film Critics Circle²^•⁹
Reception	Metascore 86; Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 95% from 79 reviews; IMDb rating 7.1/10 from about 11,000 votes⁴^•⁸
Box office	$144,822 domestic gross in the United States, on an opening weekend of $9,880¹⁰

Spoilers

Plot and approach

Krisha arrives at her sister's suburban Texas home on Thanksgiving morning, pulling a rolling bag through a neighborhood of lookalike houses, to cook the family turkey and re-enter a circle she left a decade earlier. The welcome is warm but wary. She carries a hidden stock of medications, and as the day lengthens, old wounds reopen, private conversations multiply, and her composure frays. The film's tension begins in its first frames and builds through the day as the camera moves through the household, catching family interactions and private moments that trigger emotional memories.¹^•¹¹

The estranged son Trey, who resists Krisha's attempts at affection, is played by the director himself. Most of the performers are nonactors drawn from Shults's own family, and the family photographs on the walls are of the actual relatives.¹²^•¹³ Critics described the result as part character study, part family mystery, and part psychological horror story, with the sound design and Brian McOmber's percussive score rendering the character's mounting panic from inside her head.¹²

Production history

Origin in family loss. Shults began writing the script in 2011, a month or two after his cousin relapsed at a family reunion and died of an overdose two months later. In the summer of 2012 he attempted the feature with roughly $7,000 of his own savings, acting as sole producer, and the attempt collapsed; he has described that week as the worst of his life and said he had a nervous breakdown behind closed doors.⁵

The short film. Rather than abandon the material, Shults spent two years re-editing the footage into a fourteen-minute short with the same arc as the eventual feature. The short premiered at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival, where it received Special Jury Recognition for Cinematography. Encouraged by his friend and producer Justin R. Chan, he rewrote the script and reshot the story.⁵^•¹⁴

The feature shoot. The feature was filmed in August 2014 over nine days in Shults's parents' house, which he called the best week of his life. The production was largely a do-it-yourself effort, relying on crowdfunding for financing, with a multi-generational cast of family members: his aunt Krisha Fairchild in the title role, his mother Robyn Fairchild as Krisha's sister, and his grandmother Billie Fairchild as their mother.⁵^•⁶^•¹⁵

Release and reception

Krisha premiered in competition at SXSW on March 16, 2015 and won the Grand Jury and Audience Awards for Narrative Feature. It went on to play the Critics' Week section of the Cannes Film Festival and festivals including BFI London, Melbourne, Deauville, Karlovy Vary, and AFI FEST.⁷^•¹^•¹⁶ A24 released it theatrically in limited release on March 18, 2016; it grossed $144,822 domestically.⁸^•¹⁰

Critical response was strongly positive. The film holds a 95% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metascore of 86, and Time Out's review compared Shults's prowling camera to Robert Altman in chamber-drama mode and Fairchild's performance to Gena Rowlands.⁸^•⁴^•¹⁷ The Karlovy Vary festival program called it a stylistically courageous drama in which the protagonist's inner world is conveyed through photography and editing.¹⁵

Awards

Beyond the SXSW prizes, the film's honors include:⁹^•¹⁶

John Cassavetes Award, Film Independent Spirit Awards 2016, for the production team of Shults, Justin R. Chan, Chase Joliet, and Wilson Smith.
Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award, Gotham Awards 2016.
Best Directorial Debut, National Board of Review 2016, and a place on its Top Ten Independent Films list.
Best First Film, New York Film Critics Circle 2016, and the New Generation Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, shared by Shults and Krisha Fairchild.
Critics' Award at the Deauville Film Festival, Best Film Prize at Taormina, the FIPRESCI Prize at Reykjavik, and the American Independent Narrative Award at Denver.
Best Actress for Krisha Fairchild at the Nashville Film Festival 2015 and a Golden Thumb for Best Actress at Ebertfest 2022.

Across its run the film recorded 17 wins and 28 nominations.⁴

The filmmakers

Trey Edward Shults entered film through the camera department of Terrence Malick's Voyage of Time, working as a film loader, and worked in various capacities on Malick's The Tree of Life (2011) and Song to Song (2017). The Film Festival Cologne program cites John Cassavetes and Malick as his two inspirations for Krisha.³^•⁶ Krisha Fairchild had done some acting in television and movies along with voiceover work over the years; her nephew cast her in the 2014 short, which grew into the feature.¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2015 to 2019 › Drama films 2015 and 2016 › Released in 2015

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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