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E. Elias Merhige
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E. Elias Merhige

Fresh out of SUNY purchase, E. Elias Merhige shocked both the film industry and the art world in 1991 with his debut feature BEGOTTEN proclaimed by TIME MAGAZINE as one of the top ten films of the year.

Some of the most influential minds of the 20th century art and film worlds: Susan Sontag, Donald Richie, Amos Vogel, and Chris Marker, embraced the film and praised it as a masterpiece of visionary art.

His next feature, SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, produced by Nicholas Cage, starring Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich became a critically acclaimed success and earned two Oscar nominations in the year 2000.

The success of this film opened doors all over Hollywood for Merhige. Variety hailed him one of the few genuinely underground filmmakers to emerge above ground with an Oscar worthy film while the New York Post raved: "Director Merhige is remarkably successful at conveying both the heady atmosphere of the German expressionist filmmaking in its heyday and a sense of how wonderful those films actually look, even today."

Elias has just completed SUSPECT ZERO for Cruise/Wagner and Paramount, starring Ben Kingsley, Aaron Eckhart, and Carrie-Anne Moss.


Note: This profile was written in or before 2005.

E. Elias Merhige Facts

Birth NameEdmund Elias Merhige
OccupationDirector
BirthplaceBrooklyn, New York, USA

Selected Filmography

Not available.