IN OFFICIAL SELECTION “KNOCK KNOCK” (Sweden)) WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER PERSSON

BIO:

Christopher Persson is a swedish screenwriter, actor, director and visual artist who was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1971.

With an early talent for drawing and writing, Christopher ever since he was a little boy, wanted to tell stories and did his first dramatization of his own written material combining story narration and live sound effects, recorded on a cassette player at the age of eight.

After finishing his drama studies at the Calle Flygare theatre school in Stockholm he started making a living as a voice actor for radio and tv commercials while he also wrote several short stories with the hope of eventually turning them into radio drama. This eventually paved the way into the media industry.

With additional studies in art history, film history, painting, soundscape design, production design, screenwriting and feature film lighting, combined with a career as a radio personality and producer, eventually becoming one of Sweden´s most merited voices in radio and television branding, Christopher gained a broad knowledge and hands-on experience of various media production techniques.

In 1996 he was cast in the musical Miss Saigon and in 2004 he got a starring role as "Harmon" in the american creature feature "Stinger" and also started producing his first film; a documentary short called "Summer memories of Stockholm" which he both filmed and edited. He later produced and directed the short film "The diving adventure" shot on location in Thailand and the documentary short "Saigon Fast Food" filmed in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Since then he has written a number of short film scripts and is currently developing a tv series concept, a radio drama concept and a musical along with storylines for feature films.

“KNOCK KNOCK” A Feature Screenplay Written by CHRISTOPHER PERSSON (Sweden)

LOGLINE: (Genre: Drama / Suspense)

A young woman feeling lonely recounts a nightmare with the hope of getting some attention from her unsympathetic boyfriend, who instead decides to leave her but when an unexpected knock on the door occurs, things turn out to be quite different from what they have seemed.

STORY OUTLINE:

The interior of a house covered in darkness lies silent in the night. At the house´s far end a bed reveals the outline of person sleeping underneath its covers. Suddenly the engine roar of a car parking outside rips through the silence. A beam from the headlights shoots through the house straight at the bed and wakes the person up. The intense light temporarily blinds Anna, a woman in her early thirties with long blonde, straight hair wearing a t-shirt.

She sits up disorientated and turns to see what time it is on her wallmounted clock and then her cellphone but the wallmounted clock turns out to be without hands and the cellphone´s display only shows lines instead of digits. She then notices something strange about a photo of her parents who seem to stare blamingly at her.

She starts to feel uneasy and looks around for her boyfriend who seems to be missing. She calls out to him a couple of times but there is no answer. Suddenly she hears voices from outside the door and notices a streak of light changing in size underneath its rim. As it seems to be ajar with strangers next to it, she grows concerned and sneaks up to close it. As she reaches it she believes she recognizes her boyfriend´s voice among the others. Suddenly they start to grow fainter and seem to move away down the street. She peers out and manages to catch a glimpse of some people moving away in the distance.

As she cannot understand where her boyfriend is going in the middle of the night disappearing with strangers she decides to go after him and quickly puts on some clothes. She hurries to catch up. Her pursuit takes her into deserted, streets but no matter how much she tries to catch up, she always finds herself out of reach being too far away.

When she has lost eyesight of him, after having crossed a bridge, her search eventually takes her into a deserted park where she suddenly discovers a strange figure sitting all alone on a bench, wearing a hood over his head, making her not know who it really is. The person sits there completely still in an eerie fashion. Despite being totally isolated, she eventually succumbs to her curiosity and approaches the strange figure to find out who it is. As she stretches out her hand and touches the person´s shoulder he suddenly reacts and turns.

She wakes up.

Opening her eyes she finds her boyfriend sitting on the bed. While she is relieved by the sight of him his demeanor puzzles her as he sits there virtually without acknowledging her existence. She tries to get his attention telling him about the nightmare but he avoids replying or even looking at her. When confronting him about what´s wrong, she learns that he has given up on their relationship. She bursts into tears and rushes into her bathroom, where she tries to fight her crying.

She hears a door closing, gets out of the bathroom to find his keys in an envelope realizing that he has left her and slumps down on a chair. She sits there for a short while. Suddenly there is a knock on the door. Believing it to be her boyfriend changing his mind, she is disappointed to find a caretaker coming by for his daily visit. As she lets him in, he tries to make small conversation about her wellbeing and asks her about "the friend" she´s just talked to. As she asks him what he means, he says he has heard her talking to someone a little while before. Denying having talked to anyone, she confronts the caretaker about him listening in on her. He admits to having briefly stood outside her door overhearing her as he realized that he had to return to his car to get something. Finding his presence unbearable as he starts to try to tidy up in her home, she finally throws him out.

As he leaves she watches him through her windows. Her thoughts and frustration about the situation suddenly turn into muttering commentary. As she starts talking to herself and as her talking to herself progresses, it evolves into a dialogue in which she both speaks as herself and replies as her boyfriend. While she switches back and forth, arguing with herself, it becomes evident that her boyfriend in fact has been a figment of her imagination making her isolation, loneliness and unpromising fate even more evident. She remains sitting there all by herself in the empty house involved in her own dialogue, going on and on about different things until it is clear that she is insane.