Exit Elena
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“The Movie Industry Doesn’t Have Any Etiquette, Just Fear”: Director Nathan Silver on Thirst Street and Making Eight Features in Eight Years
Nathan Silver has made eight films in eight years. That doesn’t include other shorts he’s written or executive produced. For anyone not in the business of film, that might seem standard. For anyone who is, it’s wildly impressive, especially taking into consideration the inclusion of pre-production time, when a script is written, money is raised and all the frustrating puzzle pieces of building a team have to fall into place. Silver’s latest film, Thirst Street, centers on Gina (Lindsay Burdge), an American flight attendant who becomes entwined in a toxic obsession. After landing in Paris, she falls for Jerome (Damien […]
by Meredith Alloway on Sep 28, 2017 -
Exit Elena – A Hammer to Nail Review
Nathan Silver’s film had its world premiere at the 2012 Edinburgh Film Festival and opens theatrically on July 12, 2013, in at the reRun Theater in Brooklyn. Visit the film’s official website and Facebook page to learn more. NOTE: This review was first published on November 13, 2012. The biggest challenge facing the lead character of Nathan Silver’s hilarious Exit Elena during her first fumbling stint as a live-in nursing assistant isn’t her elderly patient. In fact, if Elena could simply take care of Florence as she’s supposedly been hired to do, she might be the perfect aide to help […]
by Dustin Guy Defa on Jul 11, 2013 -
16 and Pregnant: Behind the Scenes of Simian, a Tragic Comedy
Nathan Silver’s second feature Exit Elena opens at the reRun Theater this coming Friday, but the prolific Silver has already premiered his third feature, Soft in the Head, on the festival circuit and has just wrapped production on his fourth, entitled Simian. Below is a photo blog written by Silver, Simian‘s producer and co-writer Chloe Domont and Cody Stokes, the film’s co-writer, cinematographer and editor. We just finished shooting Simian, a narrative feature that follows Robbie, a Norman Mailer wannabe who takes refuge at a makeshift home for pregnant teens. The idyllic backdrop of the Hudson Valley seems to be […]
by Nathan Silver, Chloe Domont and Cody Stokes on Jul 10, 2013 -
Five Questions with Soft in the Head Director Nathan Silver
Nathan Silver’s Exit Elena was one of the surprises in the 2012 crop of American indies, a delightfully idiosyncratic lo-fi portrait of a withdrawn live-in nurse who becomes a key figure in the family household where she’s working, far beyond her professional role. The film, which featured all non-actors including Silver’s mother, girlfriend and Silver himself, premiered at Edinburgh and has played around the world since then, in the process winning fans such as director Hal Hartley and Filmmaker‘s own Brandon Harris (who recently programmed the film as part of Hammer to Nail‘s screening series). Though Exit Elena is still on […]
by Nick Dawson on Apr 10, 2013 -
Unknown Pleasures: Viewing U.S. Indie Cinema From Afar
Catering to virtually every niche, Berlin offers some 70 film festivals each year. Since 2009, the first on the calendar has been the Unknown Pleasures Festival. Held during the first two weeks of January at the historic Babylon Cinema in former East Berlin, it is a work of love run entirely by three enthusiasts of US independent cinema, providing a sorely needed platform for recent American arthouse films. This year’s edition opened on a disappointing note with the German premiere of Michel Gondry’s The We and the I. Typically saccharine and contrived, Gondry’s latest portrays a group of Bronx teens […]
by Giovanni Marchini Camia on Jan 17, 2013 -
EIFF 2012: NEW BEGINNINGS
Walking around the opening party you couldn’t help but hear the word “rebirth” a lot. As the most heavily pregnant person in the room, this made me jump, but I soon joined in the celebration. The 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival had just opened with William Friedkin‘s Killer Joe, and the evening was a definite success. Not everyone liked the film — there were questions about on-screen violence towards women in particular — but everyone agreed that as an opener, new festival director Chris Fujiwara had hit the right note. Smacked it right on the kisser, you might say. There […]
by Hope Dickson Leach on Jun 24, 2012 -
Five Questions with Exit Elena Director Nathan Silver
“Sorry to put you in the middle of this,” says Cindy Akerman (Cindy Silver) to Elena (Kia Davis), as they sit at breakfast and she argues with her husband about her decision to hire Elena as a live in nurse for his mother without telling him. And so it begins. At 71 minutes long, filmmaker Nathan Silver’s Exit Elena is an exquisite gem of a movie. We watch as Elena is dragged into the dysfunction of family life and struggles to maintain her professional role looking after the elderly Florence (Gert O’Connell) while her employer drags her along to zumba […]
by Hope Dickson Leach on Jun 21, 2012
