At age 19 and after earning her high school diploma in Mexico City, Miller began her higher education studies in philosophy at the Aix-Marseille University in France.
Yet after a few months of struggle with the language and dislike for her chosen major, she decided to drop school and return to Mexico City.
[7] This idea was reinforced after studying the works of Latin American filmmakers, particularly the Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel in her film La Ciénaga (The Swamp, 2001).
[12] Ver Llover was awarded the Short Film Golden Palm in 2007 and Miller became the first Mexican female director to receive the prize.
Taking a humanitarian approach, Roma narrates the story of a worker who finds and helps a woman illegally traveling inside a train that arrives at the soap factory where he works.
[14] The short film also ended up being a national and international success and helped her to establish her reputation as a promising filmmaker in her country of origin.
[21] The same year, Miller collaborated as the producer executive for Gustavo Gamou's documentary El Regreso del Muerto (The Return of the Dead, 2014), a film that narrates the life of a man who fakes his death in order to escape from the organized crime.
[28] Despite the variety of topics explored on her narratives, ranging from adolescence to adulthood conflicts, Elisa Miller's films are characterized by a focus on human solitude and the internal struggles for decision making, particularly under external pressures.
In her films, including Ver Llover, Vete más lejos, Alicia and her documentary About Sarah, women are shown as brave and persevering individuals willing to follow their objectives as they challenge patriarchal beliefs.
[33] Further, due to her primary collaboration with female cinematographers and screenwriters, including María Secco and Gabriela Vidal respectively, her films share a feminine perspective.
As a great admirer of Chantal Akerman's works, especially the film News From Home (1977), Miller has tried to incorporate formal documentary qualities in her narratives.
[35][36] She seeks to create films that “[lie] in between the thin border of documentary and fiction,” by including spontaneous events that not always follow the original script.
[39] Additionally, her works do not focus on showing attractive characters that follow conventional Hollywood standards of beauty but individuals that accurately reflect the reality of the modern society.
[40] While Ver Llover represented the beginning of Miller's cinematic career both nationally and internationally, it also became one of the most complicated moments in her life outside of film.
[41] For Miller, winning the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival turned out to be a moment of significant emotional pressure: “What happened is that it gave a boost to my career.
It was a kick […] On the other hand, it generated an expectation in a personal level and in others, either producers [and] the press […] Suddenly, I was facing an expectation that I was not even able to handle myself.”[42] In response to these social pressures in Mexico, Miller gathered with the actress Sofia Espinosa, a long life friend and contributor, and the cinematographer María Secco to collaborate in the production of her first full-length feature Vete mas lejos, Alicia.
[46] Many of them went even further into calling her “the little girl” as she intended to defend her role as the directions: “I [personally] never confronted machismo in cinema; however, in [El Placer es Mío] I had a hard time demonstrating my abilities to men in my crew.