Director Lilian T. Mehrel tells viewers to expect a thrill ride with twists and turns for Honeyjoon, a dark comedy about a grieving mother and daughter holidaying in the romantic Azores.
“What I love to do is take audiences on a roller coaster ride of laughter and emotion,” Mehrel, who premiered Honeyjoon at the U.S. Tribeca Festival and is now set for a European premiere for her film at Tribeca Festival Lisboa in Lisbon, Portugal, told The Hollywood Reporter.
That metaphor of a thrill ride with emotional highs and lows is apt for the indie movie about Kurdish-Persian Lela, played by Call Me By Your Name actress Amira Casar and her American daughter June (Ayden Mayeri) as their Portugal trip marks the one-year anniversary of a major loss and Mehrel has her leads forever at odds over how to grieve.
“To me, the film is connected to not just the waves of grief, but grief plus life. I see the two characters of Lela and June like the yin-yang. Lela is on the dark side, and June is on the light side in their approach to grief. Lela wants to connect through her pain, whether it’s grief for her husband or for the country she lost. Meanwhile, June is running towards the light, trying to feel alive again and feel pleasure,” Mehrel explains.
Eventually, as the mother and daughter link up with a sexy, yet philosophical local tour guide João, played by Portuguese star José Condessa, Lela and June find one another and a will to embrace life once again.
And Honeyjoon viewers on the film festival circuit have happily ridden Mehrel’s emotional roller coaster because of what she calls “the shared inside joke of being human” in her feature debut.
“You feel hundreds of people in the audience laugh or then get quiet together and then get emotional or cry. It’s indescribable,” she adds.
Ultimately, Mehrel, in creating a dark comedy about a daughter running to pleasure and a mother embracing her pain, has allowed the writer and director to explore the range of human emotions behind grief.
“This film is not saying there’s a right way [to grieve]. It’s saying this is what it feels like to be alive,” she explains.
Both personally and professionally, Mehrel has been on a roller coaster of another kind with Honeyjoon after she won Tribeca’s Untold Stories pitch competition in 2024, which included $1 million to make her dark comedy.
But one condition for her win left Mehrel’s stomach in her mouth as she and her Portuguese producer, Andreia Nunes, had to make Honeyjoon in one year, in time to be considered for a world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival.
“I won, and it was just me, my script and a producer, and everything else had to be found within months so I could shoot the movie in time to make our deadline,” the director recalled.
That was followed by a whirlwind casting of Mayeri, Casar and Condessa for her leads and lining up a production crew and locations in the Azores.
“Everybody really came together and put their talent, their hard work and their love into this film. And I’m extra excited to share the film in Portugal and to connect with everyone because it was shot there and to show them the humanness of what the story is really about,” Mehrel insists.
Honeyjoon was developed at the TorinoFilmLab’s ComedyLab and Cine Qua Non Storylines Lab. The U.S.-Portugal co-production is produced by Nunes with Wonder Maria.
