by Dov Kornits
My name is Criss Gidas and I am a writer, producer, and director. After studying and working in both London, UK and in Australia, I really found my passionate dedication for the human condition. I’m committed to telling stories about the smaller, more intimate moments of life across a variety of genres. While life may seem daunting, it’s focusing on what truly matters to us as humans that gets us through the bigger, more challenging obstacles.
I’m known for my hard hitting work, or so I’ve been told. Since returning from studying overseas, I have entirely self-funded four productions (two I’ve written/produced and two that I’ve written, produced, and directed) and are proof of concept short films for their larger, feature film counterparts.
I have written and produced two short films: the ballet short film I’ll Be There (2017) with choreography by former Queensland Ballet Soloist Teri Crilly and the short film Tag, You’re It (2018) tackling sexual assault in sport. Tag, You’re It was based on my own experiences being sexual assaulted and remains a very personal film.
After all of this, I finally made the transition into directing. I directed, as well as wrote and produced, the 50 minute spec television pilot Midnight (2018), following a trans race driver that has received international recognition. My most recent work is Wireless (2019), a figure skating short film with choreography by the renowned Margaret Nicholls and figure skating doubles Jordan Dodds and Gabrielle Argent. I originally wrote this film while living in the UK and it was set in Dublin, based around the anti-abortion laws there. Upon moving back to Australia, with the anti-abortion laws being overturned in the Republic of Ireland, and reading up about the anti-abortion laws in the US, I shifted the setting to Atlanta.
Wireless is a sports-drama set in Atlanta where a recent anti-abortion bill has passed. With such strict laws in certain states about miscarriages and abortion, and Kiara being a well decorated professional figure skater with a large media following, it would make sense to set the film in a place so strict.
It’s a relatively dark realistic film that doesn’t shy away from the subjects of miscarriage, abortion, family, and mental health issues.
The film has a strong sense of family, in those you choose, not the one you’re given or born into. The protagonist, Kiara, her best friend and figure skating partner, Dexter, and coach, Saoirse, support each other because they are literally the only “family” that they have left. It shows the will to continue on living despite how much everything weighs against you.
The film itself is dark and gritty, drawing the audience into a glamorous world where skaters fight tooth and nail for the one sport they’ve dedicated their life to. Not only is this something that Kiara has fought for her entire life against her strict adoptive parents, it’s the only thing that she can seemingly control. Figure skating is her entire world with no knowledge of anything else — there’s figure skating, home, and that’s it. All of this builds to a representation of the loss and lack of life in her world as she begins to question if this is something she really wants anymore.
This, especially, is all shattered to pieces when she falls pregnant with a man she considered a confidant, a man that took her signals incorrectly. Due to everything she believes in and considering the fact that Kiara is a foster child herself and looking for her biological mother throughout the film, Kiara decides to keep the child. However, her life was never something that was considered “easy”, as her pregnancy results in a miscarriage due to the active lifestyle as a figure skater — something that no one knew about until the press confront her about it.
The motivation to create a story like this is to really challenge the audience in their perceptions of how we live our lives, especially in the family environment. The film itself doesn’t take any sides: it merely observes and lets the audience make their own decisions.
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