Sundance 2026 - World Premiere, NEXT!
Synopsis
As a series of perverse scam calls unsettles an idyllic retirement community, a starry-eyed nurse becomes entangled with her mysterious patient.
Waiting to begin her first-day orientation for her new night nurse job at a luxury retirement community, Eleni notices an energy in the geriatric exercise pool. There’s something unexpected about how the bodies are coming together in the water, the mental energy, the tone of conversation, and the way her new client turns around, out of the blue, to stare straight into her eyes.
As a series of perverse scam calls unsettles an idyllic retirement community, a starry-eyed nurse becomes entangled with her mysterious patient.
Waiting to begin her first-day orientation for her new night nurse job at a luxury retirement community, Eleni notices an energy in the geriatric exercise pool. There’s something unexpected about how the bodies are coming together in the water, the mental energy, the tone of conversation, and the way her new client turns around, out of the blue, to stare straight into her eyes.
“Night Nurse is a bold and visually luscious film that delivers a tense, clever ride that keeps the viewer in constant precarious balance, guessing what is madness and what is a dangerously scintillating manipulation.” — Sundance
"Nikonova captures the call sequences like love scenes — closely following lips whispering in ears and hands wrapping around torsos and shoulders. But between the calls, Elani often feels a sense of alienation and uncertainty, which Nikonova renders with an uncanny stillness that can feel unnatural, even creepy. This sort of unnerving isolation is established in the film’s opening credits, for which Nikonova used a robotic arm to capture a macro shot of a phone cord wrapped around Elani’s nurse uniform-clad body.”
- Sarah Fensom, American Cinematographer
“Lidia Nikonova’s cinematography bathes the film in dusky ambers, sickly greens, and midnight blues, recalling late-night cable thrillers without tipping into parody. The lighting keeps the blacks muted rather than inky, creating a soft, almost narcotic visual haze that mirrors Eleni’s gradual descent into moral ambiguity.” - Peter Gray, AU Review
“Psychological nightmare that’s as oddly seductive as it is deeply unsettling” - Alison Foreman, IndieWire
Festival Selection
Sundance 2026 - Official Selection, NEXT!
Sundance 2026 - Official Selection, NEXT!