John (Jake Ryan) has been the perfect boy for his devout mom, Mary (Jeanine Serralles), since he left the womb. Freshly tossed into a private Catholic high school by his mother, he falls head over heels for a devious young girl named Lilith (Skye Alyssa Friedman), a rebel with a hatred of her strict religious upbringing. She’s ready to push his morals and faith to the brink with a series of uncomfortable actions and increasingly sacrilegious dares, all in the name of her love.
“Director Chris Merola tackles the suppressed ideals of young people taking part in organized religion with propulsive comedic and dramatic affect. The raunchy and playful piece unearths an R-rated investigation into the romantic and comedic trials of puberty and the complex pressures facing American youth today.”—Casey Baron, Tribeca principal.
I had to ease into this film, because it’s centered on high school boys, and as the synopsis mentions, there’s a lot of immature boy humor—talks of dicks and pussies—to be honest.
But the hardship that John endures seems untenable, as he is trying to live a righteous life, but the new girlfriend, Lilith, insists on asking him to perform cruel acts, not the least of which has him resorting to lying to his mom and school officials.
He finally is able to clear his head and make amends with his mom. It’s a nice look into when your social environment is pulling against your personal leanings.
Learn more: https://tribecafilm.com/films/lemonade-blessing-2025.
“Dead Language” looks at a breakdown in marital communications
While waiting at the airport for her husband, Aya (Sarah Adler) is mistaken for someone else. Intrigued, she decides to pick up a complete stranger (Ulrich Thomsen) on a whim. Their encounter sparks an unexpected intimacy that unsettles Aya’s sense of certainty and awakens a yearning she neither fully understands nor knows how to fulfill.
Her quiet search for meaning unfolds in a hotel room, a customer service chat and in subtle disruptions to her daily routine, as we are taken through a woman’s delicate and honest search for something meaningful.
In “Dead Language,” directors Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun expand their Oscar-nominated short “Aya” into a tender, quietly powerful feature about longing — longing for connection, for purpose, for something beyond the confines of everyday life.
“Sarah Adler delivers a luminous performance, allowing us to inhabit Aya’s emotions with minimal dialogue. Her portrayal resonates with honesty, inviting us to feel Aya’s inner conflicts and unspoken desires,” wrote Marina Gandour in her synopsis.
This is a great film that amazingly was developed from a short film to great completion. It looks at how a slight and brief meeting led Aya on a road, which, if she hadn’t been lucky, could have met her with a dreadful fate.
The key to all this is literally a key that the stranger from the airport gives her and she uses it to enter a hotel room that finds her in the presence of two even stranger men.
In a chance and unexpected encounter at the airport, Aya gets a smidgen of what she thinks is missing from her life and goes to unimaginable ends to seek fulfillment.
In the end, during a sweeping dance scene, she finds what she has had all along—in the embodiment of her husband, Aviad, played by Yehezkel Lazarov, Engaging film from the Czech Republic, Israel, and Poland, and one that I think will be well received at Tribeca.
Learn more: https://tribecafilm.com/films/dead-language-2025.