Christian Schäfer was born in Dillenburg in 1990. After graduating from high school, he gained practical theater and film experience starting in 2011, for example as a recording assistant on the television production "Marie Brand und das Lied von Tod und Liebe" (2012). From 2013 to 2018, he studied film directing at the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Cologne. During this time, he worked on various television productions (e.g. as a set-runner on Isabell Kleefeld's "Besser als Du", 2014) and realized his own short films. In 2014 Schäfer made the 24-minute film "Zwei Gesichter," the first film officially supported by the German Soccer Association on the topic of homophobia in soccer, about an 18-year-old Bundesliga player who hides his homosexuality.    

Schäfer's medium-length graduation film, the tragicomedy "Dieter Not Unhappy" (2017) with Christoph M. Ohrt and Leslie Malton, premiered at the 2018 Max Ophüls Preis Film Festival and screened in the Cannes short film program the same year. It won Best Student Film at the California Independent Film Festival in Orinda, USA.   

After graduating, Schäfer worked as 2nd assistant director on the television drama "Der König von Köln" (2019), among other projects, before shooting his first feature-length film of his own in the summer of 2020: the thriller "Trübe Wolken" ("Cloudy Clouds") is about a 17-year-old outsider who exerts a strange fascination on a fellow student and a teacher. The film premiered at the Max Ophüls Preis Film Festival in January 2021; lead actor Jonas Holdenrieder won the award for Best Young Actor. After further festival participations, "Trübe Wolken" was released regularly in cinemas in February 2022.