Surviving the Silence: The Roxane Gay Story Filming Locations

Surviving the Silence: The Roxane Gay Story brings one of author Roxane Gay’s most personal works to the screen. Based on her 2017 memoir Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, the Lifetime drama follows Roxane from childhood into adulthood and examines how a traumatic experience at age 12 affected her relationship with her body, food and the world around her.

Hilda Martin plays Roxane during her younger years, while Sunnii E. Bartee portrays her as an adult. Gay is also closely involved behind the camera. She wrote the screenplay, serves as an executive producer and narrates the film herself. Asia Youngman directs the movie, which premieres on Lifetime on September 5, 2026. Although Roxane Gay’s life story is rooted in the United States, the production itself headed north to Canada.

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Where Was Surviving the Silence Filmed?

Surviving the Silence: The Roxane Gay Story was filmed primarily in Kelowna, British Columbia. The production operated under the working title Hunger during filming in 2025. British Columbia industry records list Hunger as a movie-of-the-week production based in Kelowna, with Asia Youngman attached as director and Darren Robson as production manager.

Kelowna sits in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, along the eastern shore of Okanagan Lake. Rather than using the city simply for scenic establishing shots, the production appears to have relied on its streets, homes and commercial areas to create the everyday environments surrounding different periods of Roxane’s life.

Kelowna, British Columbia

Kelowna served as the central production hub for the Lifetime movie. The story begins with young Roxane and her family settling into what seems to be a comfortable suburban community. For those portions of the movie, filming reportedly made use of residential areas and real properties around Kelowna.

That approach suits the intimate nature of the film. Surviving the Silence is not built around large action sequences or elaborate fantasy sets. Much of its story depends on homes, schools, streets and ordinary public spaces that initially appear safe and familiar.

The production could therefore use existing Kelowna properties rather than creating an entire neighborhood on a studio backlot. Exact addresses for the residential properties used in the movie have not been publicly confirmed.

Downtown Kelowna

Parts of downtown Kelowna were also used during production. Location reporting connected with the movie indicates that the crew worked around the city’s commercial core and adapted existing businesses and storefronts for scenes. Some properties were reportedly redressed so that modern Kelowna could represent the locations and periods required by Roxane’s story.

No individual downtown shop or business has been officially identified as a principal filming location, so claims attaching a specific recognizable storefront to the movie should be treated carefully unless further production information is released.

Downtown Kelowna gives filmmakers a relatively compact combination of commercial streets, older buildings, newer development and residential blocks. That variety allows different environments to be created without moving a television production over long distances.

The Roxane Family Home

The family home is one of the more important settings in Surviving the Silence because the film spends significant time with Roxane during her formative years. Production reporting indicates that real residential properties in Kelowna were used for the home sequences rather than relying entirely on purpose-built interiors.

The specific house has not been publicly identified. There is also no verified evidence at present that the production used Roxane Gay’s actual childhood home or traveled to one of the American cities where she lived. The houses seen in the movie should therefore be understood as Canadian stand-ins created for the dramatization.

When Was Surviving the Silence Filmed?

Principal production took place during the summer of 2025. UBCP/ACTRA production records list Hunger from July 14 through August 1, 2025, with the production office based in Kelowna. Director Asia Youngman later referred publicly to spending about 40 days in Kelowna while working on the project.

Those two details are not necessarily contradictory. The industry listing reflects the formal production period, while Youngman’s time in the city could also have included preparation before cameras rolled and work around the end of the shoot.

The production office was listed at 209-346 Lawrence Avenue in Kelowna. Importantly, that address was a production contact office. There is currently no evidence that the Lawrence Avenue property appears on screen.

Was the Movie Filmed in Omaha?

Despite telling Roxane Gay’s real story, Surviving the Silence does not appear to have been filmed in Omaha, Nebraska, where Gay was born. Available production records instead point to British Columbia as the movie’s production base, with Kelowna standing in for the various American environments seen throughout the story.

That makes Surviving the Silence another biographical television drama in which Canadian locations quietly double for places in the United States. In this case, Kelowna’s residential neighborhoods and downtown streets provide the physical backdrop for a story that remains closely tied to Gay’s own memories and experiences.