Shorts Exclusive: Tribeca-Bound ‘I’m Not Home’ Debuts Trailer Featuring Julian De Niro & Eli Brown

EXCLUSIVE: I’m Not Home, a memory-soaked, atmospheric debut from writer-director Elena Parasco, will make its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival, with the trailer debuting exclusively here.

Executive producers include JR and Marco Gentile, and starring Julian De Niro and Eli Brown, the film unfolds over the course of a single afternoon in Queens, where two best friends reunite after months apart.

The story follows Tilo and Rune, whose decade-long ritual of collecting and listening to answering machine tapes from vintage stores across New York City becomes the backdrop for a quiet emotional reckoning. As the pair sift through recordings of strangers’ confessions and missed connections, fragments of memory begin to echo their own unspoken tension.

What emerges is a deeply intimate portrait of friendship existing in a liminal and fleeting space, where affection edges toward something more, and where what remains unsaid carries as much weight as what is spoken. The film leans into a nostalgic, almost painterly yet gritty sense of melancholia, with Parasco crafting a textured and quietly unnerving atmosphere that lingers long after the frames fade.

Inspired by a tragic true story that made headlines in New York City, I’m Not Home offers a restrained and observational glimpse into modern boyhood, allowing its characters’ inner lives to surface through silence, memory and proximity.

New York-based filmmaker Parasco makes her narrative debut following a body of work spanning experimental films and commissioned pieces for institutions including NYC Ballet, the Olympics and WNBA. Her work often explores the grey spaces where identity and intimacy blur, combining tactile cinematography with sound design informed by her studies in neurocinematics.

Producers on the project include Ellis Fox, John Hinkel, Scott Aharoni and Aaron Craig. Fox previously executive produced Peter Hujar’s Day for Ira Sachs, starring Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, and served as associate producer on Charlie Kaufman’s How to Shoot a Ghost. Aharoni, co-founder of Curious Gremlin, has produced and directed films that have screened at festivals including Cannes, Venice and Berlinale, while Craig, co-founder of We Are Films, has worked across narrative and international co-productions with credits spanning Sundance and Cannes selections.