Neon Parish.
A neo-noir feature about a getaway driver who stops running — shot across twenty-one rain-soaked nights.
- Role
- Elias Voss
- Production
- Independent Feature
- Director
- David Okafor
- Release
- 2024 · 104 min
Overview
Elias Voss has driven getaway cars for a decade and never looked back — until one job strands him in a parish of all-night chapels, diners, and neon. Cole plays him as a man fluent in silence: the performance lives in glances, in hands that never quite settle, in a stillness the camera can't look away from.
The shoot was unapologetically nocturnal — twenty-one consecutive night shoots through real rain, real streets, and available light. Cole stayed on a reversed sleep schedule for the full six weeks and did all of his own driving work after two months of stunt-driver training.
The approach
With barely forty pages of dialogue in the final cut, the role demanded screen craft at its purest: eyelines, breath, micro-expression. Cole and the director rehearsed in moving cars at 2 a.m. to find the character's rhythm, and most of the film's quietest moments were captured in single takes.
“Cole does more with a rear-view mirror glance than most actors manage with a monologue.”
Festival Circuit Review · Harbor Lights Fest
