News

With the American Film Festival in Wrocław comes the Us in Progress co-production forum initiative. It also means that micro gems might trickle down from Europe in the unfinished form into Sundance and/or SXSW in early 2016. On the plate for October 22nd and 23rd, the six projects selected for the 2015 Us in Progress Wrocław include:

Actor Martinez by Mike Ott and Nathan Silver

Up until now, the project that teams Littlerock, Pearblossom Hwy and Lake Los Angeles helmer with Exit Elena, Soft in the head, Uncertain Terms and Stinking Heaven had no title. This

stars Bobby Black, Connor Long and Lindsay Burdge.

Alaska is a Drag by Shaz Bennett

Based on her 2012 short, if Rocky and Hedwig had a love child – that would best describe our hero Leo — an aspiring superstar – if he can just get out of Alaska. Everyone who works in a fish cannery – slicing fish for...

Rebounds and Role-play: Silver’s Latest Returns to Uncomfortable Interactions

With his fourth feature film, Uncertain Terms, indie film director Nathan Silver advances the knack he has for exploring awkward and uncomfortable human interactions within the confines of people suffering through displaced, temporary scenarios. Perhaps more thematically aligned with his 2012 film, Exit Elena, Silver’s penchant for characters seemingly hell bent on making wrong decisions, (a la his aggravating protagonist in Soft in the Head) takes center stage here. Relationships and the nascent notion of responsibility are hardly finite fixtures, something playfully, agonizingly explored.

Robbie (David Dahlbom) has left Brooklyn to works as a handyman for his Aunt Carla (Cindy Silver) in the Hudson Valley. It’s not at first clear why, but he seems to be running away from something back home and without much of a plan. Carol runs a home for pregnant teen girls in the countryside,...

Which filmmakers today are good at filming groups? Independent films especially get hung with a bad rep for often fixating on a lonely or eccentric protagonist, or an oddly paired duo or romantic couple. Through the five features he's made in the past six years, New York-based filmmaker Nathan Silver has demonstrated a strong affinity for ensemble settings that explore the dynamics and tensions between an individual and a larger collective of people. The groups in Silver's films take different forms: a dysfunctional household in Exit Elena; a homeless shelter in Soft in the Head; a home for pregnant teens in Uncertain Terms; and a rehab commune in his latest, Stinking Heaven. But invariably they involve people on the margins of society forming unlikely bonds under one roof, with an outsider figure threatening to upset the equilibrium.>> - Kevin B. Lee...

Which filmmakers today are good at filming groups? Independent films especially get hung with a bad rep for often fixating on a lonely or eccentric protagonist, or an oddly paired duo or romantic couple. Through the five features he's made in the past six years, New York-based filmmaker Nathan Silver has demonstrated a strong affinity for ensemble settings that explore the dynamics and tensions between an individual and a larger collective of people. The groups in Silver's films take different forms: a dysfunctional household in Exit Elena; a homeless shelter in Soft in the Head; a home for pregnant teens in Uncertain Terms; and a rehab commune in his latest, Stinking Heaven. But invariably they involve people on the margins of society forming unlikely bonds under one roof, with an outsider figure threatening to upset the equilibrium.>> - Kevin B. Lee...

Director Nathan Silver is probably sick of getting confused on Google with the stat-crunching analyst Nate Silver. But both have the numbers going for them: The filmmaking Silver has directed five no-budget features since 2009, all of them promising-to-inspired, none of them the kind of calling-card indie flick that seems to exist only to help secure financing for the next project. That's a major-league average.

Silver slices life with a sharpness and acuity rare in filmmakers much older than him, and Uncertain Terms — his latest, although another, Stinking Heaven, is already making the festival rounds — is his strongest yet. Like Soft in the Head and Exit Elena, it concerns young people trying to keep their cool in confined ...

Read More: Laff Review: Nathan Silver's 'Uncertain Terms' Finds a Fresh Spin on Marital Problems Relationships today are increasingly difficult to define and label, no matter where you are in life, and "Uncertain Terms," the 2014 film from Nathan Silver ("Exit Elena," "Soft in the Head"), understands that issue. Rather than seeking to find closure, the film prefers to live in the turmoil, confusion and anxiety that relationship difficulties can cause. Silver writes and directs the film, which follows Robbie, a 30-year-old man in a disintegrating marriage who flees the city to spend some time at his aunt's country house, a safe haven for pregnant teenagers. Robbie's arrival and burgeoning friendship with the young Nina causes upheaval among the teens. "Uncertain Terms" was an official selection at the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, and Starz Denver Film Festival. The film...

★★★★☆ Writer and director Nathan Silver again seeks to explore the dynamics of communal living just as he did in Exit Elena (2012) to Uncertain Terms (2014). In the latter film, pregnant teens take refuge in the home of Carla (Cindy Silver), who plays a maternal, educator role in their lives and aims to protect them from external anxiety. His fifth feature Stinking Heaven (2015), which received its world premiere at Iffr, focuses on the home of Jim (Keith Poulson) and his wife Lucy (Deragh Campbell) in 1990s suburban New Jersey, who have created a commune for sober living, welcoming any recovering addict to live with them peacefully.

An Eric Rohmer season opens today at BFI Southbank and runs through January 27. "Most people know that Rohmer is very French, very chilly, very flat and very static," writes Michael Newton in the Guardian. "However, what most people know is entirely wrong." David Jenkins at Little White Lies argues that The Green Ray (1986) "stands among the headiest pinnacles of modern cinematic art." And Nathan Silver (Exit Elena, Soft in the Head) urges us to catch A Tale of Winter (1992): "We have something here that presents the craziness of love so elegantly and forcefully that it’s necessary viewing for every human interested in matters of the heart (which is most of you, I hope)." » - David Hudson...

An Eric Rohmer season opens today at BFI Southbank and runs through January 27. "Most people know that Rohmer is very French, very chilly, very flat and very static," writes Michael Newton in the Guardian. "However, what most people know is entirely wrong." David Jenkins at Little White Lies argues that The Green Ray (1986) "stands among the headiest pinnacles of modern cinematic art." And Nathan Silver (Exit Elena, Soft in the Head) urges us to catch A Tale of Winter (1992): "We have something here that presents the craziness of love so elegantly and forcefully that it’s necessary viewing for every human interested in matters of the heart (which is most of you, I hope)." » - David Hudson...

In the films of Nathan Silver, characters are constantly hurtling headlong into the unknown. Each of the thirty-year-old American director’s films have thus far featured protagonists suspended in a state of limbo, stuck between stations yet hell-bent on moving forward—though in most cases by taking a few steps back first. Even the titles of his projects—Exit Elena (2012), Soft in the Head (2013) and Uncertain Terms (2014) among them—suggest a kind of transitory or unsettled sense of existence; his latest, Stinking Heaven (currently in post production), projecting something even more intangible, an unexpected kind of purgatory perhaps. >> - Jordan Cronk...

In the films of Nathan Silver, characters are constantly hurtling headlong into the unknown. Each of the thirty-year-old American director’s films have thus far featured protagonists suspended in a state of limbo, stuck between stations yet hell-bent on moving forward—though in most cases by taking a few steps back first. Even the titles of his projects—Exit Elena (2012), Soft in the Head (2013) and Uncertain Terms (2014) among them—suggest a kind of transitory or unsettled sense of existence; his latest, Stinking Heaven (currently in post production), projecting something even more intangible, an unexpected kind of purgatory perhaps. >> - Jordan Cronk...

We're proud to announce a new partnership with one of our favorite online film journals, cléo. Every month, cléo will be presenting a great film to watch on our video on demand platform. In conjunction, we'll be hosting an exclusive article by one of their contributors. This month the journal's founding editor, Kiva Reardon, writes on Nathan Silver's Exit Elena, which is available to watch starting June 28 in the Us, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Norway, and Germany!

I need not sell my soul to buy bliss.

—Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre

Gothic fiction dates back to 1764 with Horace Walope’s The Castle of Otranto. Unlike the lush Romantic novels that had come before, here the supernatural plagued the lead characters and darker thematics prevailed. Walpoe’s book, in addition to being a bestseller of the time, paved the way for the greats of Gothic fiction to come: Mary Shelley,...

Uncertain Terms

Written by Chloe Domont, Nathan Silver and Cody Stokes

Directed by Nathan Silver

USA, 2014

Director Nathan Silver is a rare talent in American indie cinema, capable of drawing great depth from seemingly innocuous situations. His films focus on displacement and youthful uncertainty, tapping as authentically as anyone else into some of his generations most immediate concerns. Though there’s noticeably more at stake than in his breakthrough gem Exit Elena, Silver’s fourth feature is a similarly quiet, intimate portrayal of everyday life.

Uncertain Terms is set in a home for pregnant teenagers, designed to protect them from the judgement and overwhelming pressure of society and family. Run by Carla (Cindy Silver), who went through a difficult time when she fell pregnant at a young age, the home is a frank, liberal environment focused on commonality and support. The girls are from varied backgrounds and have contrasting personalities...

In April, when Exit Elena (2010) and Soft in the Head (2013) were playing in New York, we posted an all-round entry on Nathan Silver. He was hard at work on Stinking Heaven (on May 9, the Kickstarter campaign achieved its goal), but Uncertain Terms was already in the can. Now Silver's fourth feature has seen its world premiere in Los Angeles and its international premiere in Edinburgh. Last week, Sarah Salovaara interviewed Silver for Filmmaker, noting that he "may be a premature embodiment of Fassbinder’s creed that 'Every decent director has only one subject and finally only makes the same film over and over again,' but Uncertain Terms feels more patient in execution than its predecessors, mirroring the bucolic enclave which houses a bevy of relatively serene pregnant teens." A roundup of reviews and a clip. » - David Hudson...

Writer-director Nathan Silver is far from the first filmmaker to rely on a loose, improvised approach to storytelling, but he’s quickly becoming one of the best of his generation. Following on the heels of the prolific Joe Swanberg, but more contained in his approach, the 30-year-old Silver has completed four distinctive features in five years, two of which hit theaters earlier this year, and already has a fifth in the works. But despite this degree of productivity, Silver’s movies don’t feel like rush jobs; instead, his alternately funny and brooding character studies invigorate routine plots with authentic behavior. His latest, “Uncertain Terms,” epitomizes this tendency. With features like "Soft in the Head" and "Exit Elena,” Silver has explored lively, intelligent personalities with a mixture of naturalism, humor and often staggering insight into conflicted mindsets. "Uncertain Terms" continues that focus with a tender portrait of thirtysomething Brooklynite Robbie (David.

Writer and director Nathan Silver is known for “The Blind” (2008), “Exit Elena” (2012) and “Soft In The Head” (2013). At this year's Los Angeles Film Festival he will premiere his new film “Uncertain Terms.”[Editor's Note: Indiewire reached out to filmmakers with films playing at the 20th La Film Festival (June 11-19) to ask them about how they shot their indie, and what advice they had for other filmmakers. We'll be posting their responses throughout the run of the festival. Go Here for the master list.] What was the most difficult shoot on your movie and how did you pull it off? The Dp, Cody Stokes, and camera crew sweated their way through long handheld takes. They're the ones who pulled off the shots, and seeing as the average for most takes was ten minutes, I don't know that there were any easy shots, per se. What's the one thing you wish someone had told you Before you started your movie? Don't cast your mother in one of the leading roles, have her host your...

The 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival (the 20th anniversary of the fest) kicked off this week, with the North American premiere of "Snowpiercer" on Wednesday. Plenty of other notable premieres are continuing to roll out this weekend, including Nathan Silver's latest, "Uncertain Terms," and we've got the exclusive poster debut. Silver's films "Exit Elena" and "Soft in the Head" have brought him notice in the indie world — our own Chris Bell called "Exit Elena" "a layered and hilarious look at the dynamics of family, relationships, and need," and "one of the few microbudgeted films which should be required viewing for undergrads" — and "Uncertain Terms" marks the 30 year old's fourth feature, with his fifth already in the works. "Uncertain Terms" takes place at a home for pregnant teens, and stars India Menuez (seen in Olivier Assayas' "Something in the Air"), whose performance has been tipped as having breakout potential, as well as her co-lead,...

Nathan Silver (the filmmaker, not statistician-media wunderkind) makes most other writer/directors seem downright lazy. He began making short films shortly after graduating college in 2005, and after a brief (seriously, three months) stay in grad school, he decided to go all-in with his cinematic ambition. He didn't wait for permission or much funding, either; his first feature-length film (after three shorts), “The Blind,” came out in 2009. His next, “Exit Elena,” really got him noticed upon its 2012 release, thanks to the acclaim he received for his very loose, improvisational techniques and lo-fi methods. See video: Here Is Megan Mullally Getting Drunk.

Nathan Silver first courted audiences in 2012 with Exit Elena, his charming, claustrophobic take on arrested development through the eyes of a live-in aide. His follow-up, Soft in the Head, also captured an outsider’s rambunctious navigation of new environs, so it should be no surprise that Uncertain Terms, premiering this Saturday at the Los Angeles Film Festival, treads the familiar territory of interloper interrupted. Silver may be a premature embodiment of Fassbinder’s creed that “Every decent director has only one subject and finally only makes the same film over and over again,” but Uncertain Terms feels more patient in execution than its predecessors, mirroring the bucolic enclave which houses a bevy of […]...

Nathan Silver first courted audiences in 2012 with Exit Elena, his charming, claustrophobic take on arrested development through the eyes of a live-in aide. His follow-up, Soft in the Head, also captured an outsider’s rambunctious navigation of new environs, so it should be no surprise that Uncertain Terms, premiering this Saturday at the Los Angeles Film Festival, treads the familiar territory of interloper interrupted. Silver may be a premature embodiment of Fassbinder’s creed that “Every decent director has only one subject and finally only makes the same film over and over again,” but Uncertain Terms feels more patient in execution than its predecessors, mirroring the bucolic enclave which houses a bevy of […]...

Above: a production still from the set of Manoel de Oliveira’s new production O velho do restelo, via our new Mubi Tumblr! Sight & Sound is poised to unveil a Best Documentaries of All Time list and Richard Brody has unveiled his ballot in advance, with annotations:

"...The history of documentary filmmaking isn’t the fact of capturing events on the wing but the idea of doing so, not the invention of investigative recording but its reinvention. That’s why, for this list, I selected movies that open new vistas for documentary filmmaking, which imply vectors of activity and thought that are still being realized today by the era’s best documentarists—and why, in mentioning these films, each of them implies many others that they have inspired. "

Above: Nathan Silver is turning to Kickstarter to fund his next project, Stinking Heaven. Keep your eyes out for his brilliant film,...

Nathan Silver's last feature, Exit Elena, earned the Brooklyn-based director comparisons to John Cassavetes, with whom he shared an almost perverse affection for domesticity at its most volatile. And yet for all the discomfort its familial warfare sometimes provoked, Elena nevertheless remained a basically good-hearted film, exuding warmth and sweetness even as hostility threatened to take hold. Not so for Soft in the Head.

Silver's latest finds the sweetness of its predecessor curdled, its warmth set ablaze, the result altogether possessed of a fiercer sensibility. Silver has gravitated away from Cassavetes, it seems, and toward the influence of another Hollywood maverick: Samuel Fuller, whose idiosyncratic riff on the hooker with the heart of gold, Th...

We've no doubt covered a lot of ground when sharing the good word on film projects that need a little love, but I don't think we've yet to spotlight a project quite like Nathan Silver's Stinking Heaven. The logline for the project: A black as tar comedy following a commune of recovering drug addicts in 1990 suburban New York, Stinking Heaven is the portrait of a group of people on the verge of a syncrhnnized nervous breakdown. Now just who is this Nathan Silver? Well, the keen eyed reader will recall seeing his name and his films featured on Twitch before. Last summer I reviewed his second feature Exit Elena, and spoke with Nathan, along with friend and fellow indie filmmaker Christopher Bell, for my...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Head Case: Silver Returns With Another Slice of Low-fi Discomfort

At the end of the final credits of Soft in the Head, Nathan Silver dedicates his latest film “For the Idiot,” a nod to his inspiration for as partially being born out of a desire to adapt Dostoevsky’s famous classic, The Idiot, concerning a character released from a sanitarium, whose subsequent interactions with the outside world suggests that the cruelty and duplicity of others is more vicious than the sanitarium. In his 2012 darkly comedic Exit Elena, Silver examines an awkward and uncomfortable relationship allowed to develop because of accepted notions of polite social exchange in a situation predicated by monetary necessity for its main character. His latest also glorifies in the discomfort of mixing company of those living in the comfortable scripts of their lives with the instability of those in a slipping down desperation to find themselves without proper support or resources.

Home to one of my favorite scenes of 2013, Nathan Silver’s Soft in the Head now has a delightfully cryptic trailer ahead of its April 18 release at New York’s Cinema Village. Roving, drunken mess Natalia (the loose-limbed Sheila Etxeberría) finds an empathetic respite from the city streets at a predominately Jewish male shelter, run by patron saint Maury (Ed Ryan.) Entirely improvised, Soft in the Head constructs its narrative from kinetic exchanges that bely the simplicity of the film’s storyline with their engrossing frenzy. More aggressive than his breakthrough Exit Elena (which will have its own run in April at Anthology), Soft in the Head teems […]...

Home to one of my favorite scenes of 2013, Nathan Silver’s Soft in the Head now has a delightfully cryptic trailer ahead of its April 18 release at New York’s Cinema Village. Roving, drunken mess Natalia (the loose-limbed Sheila Etxeberría) finds an empathetic respite from the city streets at a predominately Jewish male shelter, run by patron saint Maury (Ed Ryan.) Entirely improvised, Soft in the Head constructs its narrative from kinetic exchanges that bely the simplicity of the film’s storyline with their engrossing frenzy. More aggressive than his breakthrough Exit Elena (which will have its own run in April at Anthology), Soft in the Head teems […]...

Toh! has scored a trailer exclusive to New York filmmaker Nathan Silver's "Soft in the Head," an ode to lost souls in NYC that has played the circuit over the last year at the Sarasota, Brooklyn, Buenos Aires and Vancouver film festivals. The film arrives at New York's Cinema Village on April 18, with a VOD release coming later this summer via Devolver. It follows a young woman, Natalia (Sheila Etxeberria), who after a rift with her abusive boyfriend, lands at a halfway home temporarily, while also attracting the attentions of her friend's socially closed-off brother, which doesn't sit so well with his protective family. Richard Brody of the New Yorker gave it a winning review, writing it's "a raucous, disturbing new film... a shrewdly conceived yet emotionally unhinged blend of uproarious situations and devastating outcomes." "Soft in the Head" is Silver's third feature, initially inspired by Dostoevsky's "The Idiot.

Tomorrow evening at 7:30 pm, Dctv will be hosting “The Line Blurs: Shifting Narratives in Filmmaking,” a panel on the increasingly ambiguous division between fiction and nonfiction in filmmaking. It is a timely discussion, one that will probe questions as to whether or not a delineation between the two forms has ever existed, and why viewers and critics alike are bent on categorization. The panel will feature filmmakers Josephine Decker, Keith Miller, Lynne Sachs and Caveh Zahedi, with Nathan Silver in the moderator’s chair. Silver, director of Soft In The Head and Exit Elena, shoots without a script, mining the people […]...

Tomorrow evening at 7:30 pm, Dctv will be hosting “The Line Blurs: Shifting Narratives in Filmmaking,” a panel on the increasingly ambiguous division between fiction and nonfiction in filmmaking. It is a timely discussion, one that will probe questions as to whether or not a delineation between the two forms has ever existed, and why viewers and critics alike are bent on categorization. The panel will feature filmmakers Josephine Decker, Keith Miller, Lynne Sachs and Caveh Zahedi, with Nathan Silver in the moderator’s chair. Silver, director of Soft In The Head and Exit Elena, shoots without a script, mining the people […]...

Dysfunctional families are the crème de la crème subject for artists: the potential for laughs and intense drama is too attractive, and anyone who's had a proper childhood should have plenty of real-life experiences to mine from. But all this attention given to the rag-tag blood bunches has taken eyes away from the oddly operative ones, those far from normal but somehow able to exist and function as a unit: they get along despite their incompatible behavior, which they don't even seem to recognize. These circles warrant their own examination, and Nathan Silver does just that with his sophomore feature "Exit Elena," an often hilarious and uncomfortable study of the family surrounding one desperately lonely live-in nurse. We begin with the eponymous Elena (Kia Davis), arriving just in time to witness the culmination of her studies in the form of a nursing license. She quickly snags a gig at the...

The opening of Nathan Silver's second feature Exit Elena presents a series of images that are so simple and practical in nature, (not just because of the consumer grade camera the movie was shot on, but also by plain sight) that there's something actually rather extraordinary about them. We watch as 19-year old Elena (Kia Davis) completes the final test to become a certified nursing assistant. These moments are clunky and awkward. She struggles with a support strap, but manages to calmly talk her way through it with a gentleness and politeness that befits someone perhaps reserved and, indeed, as we're to find out, a little unsure of herself. The camera stays static as Elena goes through the motions with her practice patient. It dawns...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

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 …...

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 …...

"The comedies of John Cassavetes cut deeper," Thom Andersen explains in Los Angeles Plays Itself, "because he had an eye and an ear for ordinary madness—those flickers of lunacy that can separate us from our fellows." Nathan Silver's Exit Elena adopts many working methods typical of a Cassavetes production—shot almost entirely in Silver's family home, the film stars his girlfriend (Kia Davis, who is superb), his mother (Cindy Silver), and himself—but its affinity with a film like Love Streams, its closest likeness, runs deeper than their shared independent sensibility. Silver locates the ordinary madness bubbling just beneath the surface of his own life, and flickers of lunacy abound: Exit Elena relates the story of a young live-in a...

A Room of One’s Own: Nathan Silver’s Uncomfortable Familial Exploration

Compelling, observant, and uncomfortably funny, Nathan Silver’s latest feature, Exit Elena, is pleasant surprise, a testament of achievement with a shoe string budget. Appearing at first as a docudrama about a live-in nurse, Silver efficiently and swiftly gives us a fast paced exercise of fractured family dynamics, strange socializations centered on an abstract and mysterious woman, and a subtle subtext to ponder.

Elena (Kia Davis), is a newly licensed live-in nurse. A quiet and timid sort, she quickly gets offered a job to care for Florence (Gert O’Connell). Except Florence’s daughter-in-law, Cindy Akerman (Cindy Silver), neglected to tell husband Jim (Jim Chiros) that she hired a live-in nurse. And so immediately, Elena is thrust into an awkward family dynamic, lorded over by the extremely overbearing Cindy, who constantly bickers with her out-of-touch husband and quickly...

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 …...

So the curtain closes on another Edinburgh International Film Festival, and while the wounds from last year’s disastrous incarnation were still clear to see, this year’s event showed promising signs of progress. All that remains is to search through this year’s astonishing selection of movies and bring you the top ten films not to miss from this year’s eclectic program. As mentioned in last week's dispatch, the early crowd favorites were Bart Layton’s original and utterly compelling dramatized documentary “The Imposter” and Miguel Gomes’ beguiling love story “Tabu”. Both had already picked up critical praise from their respective spells at Sundance and the Berlinale and managed to continue their successful festival runs by dazzling the audiences at this year’s event. Also mentioned last week was Nathan Silver’s minimalist drama “Exit Elena”, a tenderly observed film which managed to...

“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 class.

It’s a gentle yet unswerving examination of relationships that blur the boundary between personal and professional, and the tension never lets up for a moment despite the lack of any dramatic artifice beyond the circumstances. Elena is a mysterious creature, compelling in her opacity which exists as...

The 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival has announced the 121 features that will screen on this year's program. The 19 world premieres include films such as Richard Ledes' "Fred," Nathan Silver's "Exit Elena" and Benjamin Pascoe's "Leave It on the Track." Other films set to screen include Bobcat Goldthwait's "God Bless America," Yang Jung-Ho's "Mirage," Luis Prieto's "Pusher" and Alexandre O. Philippe's "The Life and Times of Paul the Psychic Octopus." “Our programme reflects the exceptionally vibrant state of current cinema," said Eiff Artistic Director Chris Fujiwara. "Our audiences will be able to explore a wide range of outstanding films from around the world, including work by established masters and films from new and emerging talents." Special events include a 50th anniversary screening of "Lawrence of Arabia," and a...

London – The 66th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival(Eiff) this year will play host to 19 world premieres and 13 international bows, organizers said. Among the world debuts will be Richard Ledes’ Fred, a drama starring Elliot Gould, Stephanie Roth Haberle and Fred Melamed and Nathan Silver's comedy drama Exit Elena. Also making its world debut during the Scottish capital set festival is Benjamin Pascoe's Leave It On The Track, a documentary about a roller derby battle for the Calvello Cup. Festival organizers said the shindig aims to showcase 121 features from 52 countries, including 11 European premieres and 76 U.

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Cannes is now over which means it’s time to move to Britain as the Edinburgh Film Festival kicks off!

We’ve just been sent the full line-up for the 2012 Edinburgh Film Festival which is now in it’s 66th year. We have our people (Jamie, Steven and Emma) on the ground at the event right now ready to catch as many films as they possible can throughout the next wee or two as we get to see 121 new features and 19 world premieres.

I’ll let the full press release below do the talking but let us know what you’re looking forward to in the comments section below.

World Premieres:

Berberian Sound Studio Borrowed Time Day Of The Flowers Exit Elena Flying Blind Fred Future My Love Guinea Pigs Here, Then Leave It On The Track The Life And Times Of Paul The Psychic Octopus Life Just Is Mnl...

The full programme for the 66th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Eiff), which runs from 20 June to 1 July, has been officially announced and will feature nineteen World premieres and thirteen International premieres.

The Festival will showcase one hundred and twenty-one new features from fifty-two countries, including eleven European premieres and seventy-six UK premieres in addition to the World and International premieres. Highlights include the World premieres of Richard Ledes’ Fred; Nathan Silver’s Exit Elena and Benjamin Pascoe’s Leave It On The Track and European premieres of Lu Sheng’s Here, There and Yang Jung-ho’s Mirage in the maiden New Perspectives section; and the International premiere of Benicio Del Toro, Pablo Trapero, Julio Medem, Elia Suleiman, Gaspar Noé, Juan Carlos Tabio and Laurent Cantet’s 7 Days In Havana and the European premiere of Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America in the Directors’ Showcase. In addition to the new features presented,...