Elise DuRant is an award-winning film director and screenwriter. Her debut feature film Edén (Eden), is a bilingual film inspired by Elise’s childhood experiences in Mexico. Edén features songwriter and actor Will Oldham, made its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, its US premiere at the Atlanta Film Festival, and won the Future/Now Grand Jury Prize at the Montclair Film Festival. Her work has screened at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, as well as international film festivals including Göteborg, Durban, and Mar del Plata. Elise is the recipient of a New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Fiscal Sponsorship, and the Gabriel Figueroa Film Fund.
“With Edén, Elise DuRant has deconstructed the mythic paradise of her memories and revealed beneath it a journey through grief that feels authentically untidy and complex. The result is a moving, poetic, and deeply personal film.”
– Michael Traynor, Montclair Film Festival
“DuRant effectively uses ambient sound and a limited palette of browns, blues and pale yellows to create a hallucinatory, menacing atmosphere. (…) I look forward to what she does next.”
– Torene Svitil, Indiewire
Will Oldham barest interview: “I trust that there are people every day, finding their way to the pieces of work that are going to be important in their lives”
– Peter Machen, Salon
