Honeyjoon

Official Selection, 2025 Tribeca Film Festival

Lela and her daughter June travel to romantic Azores to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the passing of their husband and father. However, tensions grow as they realize they want different things. June has the hots for their surfer tour guide (and actually everyone in Portugal.) Her mother is equally consumed with rage over Iran’s oppression of women… and how to get June to cover up. For June, freedom is beauty, which to her Persian-Kurdish refugee mother looks like escapism. Lela wants to confront harsh realities head on, which to June looks macabre. What began as tracing the footsteps of a life-changing journey June’s father took as a young man, quickly becomes the mundane annoyances of traveling with family, including sharing a bed.

Against a backdrop of stunning oceans and honeymooners, mother and daughter navigate each other’s differences. But they also discover how suffering can give perspective for joy, and running towards life can include grief. Sexy, tender, and comedic, filmmaker Lilian T. Mehrel’s feature debut HONEYJOON offers an unexpected release, one that frees June and Lela from the stuckness they’ve been in and provides them a path to celebrate being alive together as mother and daughter.

-Laura Skokan