Shaun Greenspan, a Sarasota-based filmmaker and producer, is used to wearing many hats. He's built a career that moves between local documentaries and national collaborations. His newest film, What We Hide—written and directed by Dan Kay and distributed by Gravitas Ventures and starring Mckenna Grace (Ghostbusters: Afterlife, The Handmaid’s Tale), Jojo Regina (Where the Crawdads Sing), Dacre Montgomery (Stranger Things) and Jesse Williams (Grey’s Anatomy)—opens with two sisters who discover their mother has died of an overdose. Terrified of being split up by the foster system, they make a terrible, practical choice: hide the body and carry on.

The film was shot nearby in the Tampa Bay area, with production centered in Plant City, and it will screen locally at Burns Court Cinema beginning Aug. 29, alongside a same-day digital and on-demand release.

Greenspan's role as a filmmaker includes raising money, steering shoots and shaping stories. On What We Hide, he's credited as co-producer, behind-the-scenes photographer and EPK producer (someone who creates and manages Electronic Press Kits). The combination of roles had Greenspan handling both the logistics of the shoot and the camera work that captured how it all came together.

Greenspan moved from Connecticut to Sarasota at age 12, spent about a decade in Los Angeles, worked on major sets—Six Feet Under, Nip/Tuck, Mad Men, True Blood, Big Love—and directed shorts, including The Break Up (2011), which later screened at the Sarasota Film Festival.

He moved back to Sarasota after co-founding Triforce Pictures with Edward Fagan. It's now his base.

Greenspan describes Sarasota as “a place with a sense of community I didn’t find elsewhere, even before you get to creativity. If the community is missing, you don’t get the rest.

"I loved L.A.—the hiking, surfing, and even snowboarding the same day," he continues. "I got to work at all the big studios, but I missed my family. And I found a creative community here, too.”

That community shaped his earliest work. In 2014, he and Tony Stopperan, an Emmy-winning producer, made Paradise Fl, a feature narrative made in collaboration with Ringling College students and graduates about an oyster fisherman in the Florida Panhandle struggling with pill addiction. 

By 2019, Greenspan had widened his scope. He helped finance Skin, starring Jamie Bell, Danielle Macdonald, and Vera Farmiga, with Maven Pictures, based on the Oscar-winning short, and later contributed to Driveways as a production consultant. 

In 2023, he directed and produced The Sarasota Experience for WEDU PBS, a 56-minute documentary about the area's civic history—and refuses to airbrush the racism of the past. It screened widely and lives online as a calling card for how Greenspan frames place as part of a story.

“When we were interviewing Black residents and they talked about civil rights in Sarasota—the beach wade-ins—and watching the footage made me cry,” Greenspan says. “It was the first time I felt like I was helping. The theme became a deep dive into the past, present and future, exploring what creates a thriving community. We shot it like a feature film, doing two to three interviews a day with people across the whole spectrum of backgrounds and politics. The common thread was that they loved Sarasota, believed in it and wanted it to survive the next hundred years. Afterward, I was telling people that if Spielberg called me tomorrow, that would be incredible—but it still wouldn’t be cooler than the Sarasota Experience."

What We Hide is Greenspan's pivot into psychological thrillers through the lens of the opioid epidemic. The film asks audiences to sit inside a child’s logic. The premise is simple; the moral math is not. 

 “We’re all touched by the opioid epidemic,” Greenspan says. “Everyone has someone who knows someone who’s passed away or dealt with addiction." The production was even sponsored by Eluna, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting children, teens and families impacted by grief or addiction, underscoring its resonance.

During the What We Hide shoot, which took place in 2022, Florida weather became its own character. “It was very rainy,” Greenspan says. “A lot of our outdoor shoots were in Plant City, and it was lightning and raining so much we had to push to the next day. Then Hurricane Ian hit. We had to stop shooting for four days. That’s forever in [the film] world."

Despite the delays, the cast’s commitment impressed Greenspan. “We had Dacre Montgomery as the antagonist," he says. "When I interviewed him, he said it was one of the best scripts of his life. We lined this with amazing actors.”

The film’s timing also bore the marks of the era. Production came on the heels of the pandemic, which had shuttered sets and thrown careers into limbo. Then came the Hollywood strikes.

“The industry is in a peculiar place right now,” Greenspan says. “Streaming [on platforms like Netflix and Amazon] started as the Wild West, and the content wasn’t great. Then the pandemic shut everything down. It devastated careers. Then the strikes came. People had to stop—or do less—for years. Many picked up side jobs.”

The turbulence also slowed What We Hide’s path to release. “We made our movie during that buildup, with a [dramatic film] and an opioid topic,” Greenspan says. “It made it harder to sell. But we found a home with Gravitas, the company that bought it. It took three years.”

While Greenspan co-produced, producer Joseph Restaino spearheaded What We Hide. A New Jersey native now based in Tampa, Restaino founded Hungry Bull Productions, which has backed acclaimed features such as Pig, starring Nicolas Cage, and Passing, starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga. Restaino first read the script for What We Hide four years ago and immediately committed.

“I’ve had family members affected by the opioid crisis,” Restaino says. “[What We Hide] was a story that needed to be told. It’s about opioid orphans, and it had a very strong message.”

Hungry Bull looks for projects that resonate beyond opening weekend. “We like stories that are personal, that feel real and authentic, and that give people something to talk about,” Restaino says. “Pig is about grief. Passing was adapted from a historic novel. What We Hide is the same—it’s a strong conversation piece. Movies that have a lasting effect and make the work you’re doing feel important.”

Like Greenspan, Restaino is frank about Florida’s production headaches. He has shepherded a string of films in Tampa, from Fear of Rain to Albion: The Enchanted Stallion. All ran into storms, rescheduling issues or unexpected costs. “I never learn my lesson,” he says. “The goal is to bring films here, but the weather in the summer is always an issue. People from L.A. weren’t used to all that lightning.”

“As a producer you figure out how to make it work,” he says. “The audience won’t notice—the performances are great. It’s all the prep.”

And for Greenspan, Sarasota remains more than a backdrop. “It’s humbling to be a small part of Sarasota’s artistic identity,” he says. “To represent a place I believe in—it gave me butterflies the whole time.”

That perspective informs his next projects too. Alongside Triforce’s work on WEDU's Greater Lakeland series, he's developing a documentary about equine therapy at Quantum Leap Farm in Odessa. He's also writing a screenplay called Dorothy’s Choice, based on a story written by local journalist Carrie Seidman about an elderly woman’s decision to end her life after outliving her family. It first ran in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

“Movies are such a special form of storytelling,” Greenspan says. “With film you get to tell a story with composition and colors, what [the characters] are wearing, how the camera is moving, the music and the words. That’s what attracted me to it—taking the audience on a rollercoaster of emotion."

For Sarasota audiences, the Burns Court screening ties together Greenspan’s dual careers—local documentarian and national collaborator. What We Hide may unfold across Tampa Bay, but its themes of family, secrecy, and survival carry across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and beyond.

What We Hide opens at Burns Court Cinema, at 506 Burns Lane, in Sarasota, on Friday, Aug. 29. That evening’s 6:45 p.m. screening will be followed by a Q&A with Greenspan. On Saturday, Aug. 30, the film screens at 1 p.m. at Burns Court. The series concludes Sunday, Aug. 31, at 3:30 p.m. with another screening and Q&A with Greenspan and Restaino, followed by a reception. Click here for tickets and details.