Team Members

Brian Kelley

Brian Kelley moved from the US to Europe in 1985 as a musician/songwriter and was in a band called “Pacific” which performed concerts all across Europe. As Kelley worked in music and TV production, he discovered that many noteworthy productions were not getting the audience they deserved. So in 1990 he founded a distribution company to help address that issue. Over the years, NLN (New Life Network) has distributed 15,000+ titles into more than 30 countries, in many cases being the first international company to do so.

In the midst of ongoing distribution work, Kelley has in recent years returned to film production and currently works with production partners in Kenya, Mexico, France, India, Germany, Norway and the USA.

His passion for quality cinema and storytelling brought Kelley together with producer and director Cristóbal Krusen in the production of Sabina K., subsequently securing cinema distribution for the film in various Balkan countries. That same passion continues with the current Messenger Films production of Let Me Have My Son.

View Brian's IMDb

Sabine McDowell

Sabine McDowell was born and raised in Hamburg, Germany. McDowell wrote her first screenplay at 15, a fan fiction episode for Star Trek. She worked in the publishing industry for nine years until she moved to the U.S. in 1994. She has since raised two amazing boys and at the same time been involved with film production mainly in the Midwest region.

Among McDowell’s accolades is her work with Emmy award winning actress Cady McClain on the successful documentary Seeing is Believing: Women Direct, a film festival favorite celebrating women directors.

McDowell has contributed her marketing and social media expertise to In Motion Film Conference, launched in 2019 in St. Louis, Missouri. She has also been a co-producer for several local short films and not-for-profit passion projects.

McDowell is excited to have joined the ranks at Messenger Films as an associate producer for Let Me Have My Son. Her involvement includes crowdfunding & foundation grant work as well as in-depth research.

 

Jared Neher

Jared Neher has more than twenty years’ experience in the film industry, working primarily as a director, producer and editor. Since 2016, he has served Messenger Films not only as an editor, but also as manager of operations. His first major contribution was restoring/remastering Cristóbal Krusen’s 2001 film, Final Solution.

Neher also has a wealth of experience producing and directing animated series for children. For almost 10 years he worked for Sparkhouse Family making short animated videos that were part of Sunday School curriculum for churches. Since leaving Sparkhouse in 2017, he is now distributing that work both domestically and internationally under his company, Vignette Pictures.

Neher’s greatest joy in this industry is telling stories–telling good stories, timeless stories. His attraction to working with Messenger Films comes from this shared passion amongst the team.

Greg Silker

Greg Silker grew up in an entrepreneurial media family and started his first business in grade school. He loves giving people an opportunity to turn their inspiration into action and sees Messenger Films’ “Films of Beauty, Stories of Hope” as an amazing way to move hearts and bring change.

Silker is one of the lead producers of Let Me Have My Son and has developed the Movement Marketing Plan to maximize the film’s impact on our mental health culture.

With his entrepreneurial passion, Silker and his wife Barbara have led teams across half a dozen ministries and related businesses at the University of Minnesota including Bordertown Coffee and Kappa Pi Alpha community house. Their company Silker Studios has worked with the premier outdoors companies in the nation for 25 years.

The Silker couple and friends are currently launching the Firehouse Commons Entrepreneurship Center and an international film initiative that equips and partners with cross-cultural filmmakers.

 

Greg Wright

Greg Wright is a pastor, technology consultant, film critic, and editor.

Wright is also the author of several scholarly works including Tolkien in Perspective, Peter Jackson in Perspective, and Two Roads Through Narnia as well as the novel West of the Gospel (as W. John MacGregor).

For over a decade, Wright served as the Managing Editor at HollywoodJesus.com. His poetry has been published by the Washington Poetic Routes project, Whispers of Wenatchee, and the Shrub-Steppe Poetry Journal. His latest literary work The Gospel of Doubt: Selected Poems of Simon Bar-Jonah, has been published by Methow Press (2021).