A mother-daughter tale of light and dark, with 'Honeyjoon' director Lilian T. Mehrel
What happens when grief meets paradise? Lilian T. Mehrel's 'Honeyjoon' finds profound beauty in this collision, following a mother and daughter whose contrasting responses to loss play out against the stunning backdrop of the Azores. Lilian's debut feature asks whether we can laugh while we mourn, love while we ache.
She describes her characters through a yin-yang lens: where one woman chases light and humor as shields against pain, the other surrenders to shadow and sorrow. Their dynamic becomes the film's beating heart, raising questions that linger long after the credits roll.
The journey to bring 'Honeyjoon' to life has been one of perfect timing and validation. After winning the Tribeca Film Festival's Untold Stories grant last year, Mehrel's film now premieres at the very same festival—exactly one year later. It's a full-circle moment that speaks to both the film's resonance and Mehrel's commitment to telling stories that matter.
Transcript
You are listening to the we need to Talk About Oscar podcast.
Speaker A:And this is our conversation with writer director Lillian T.
Speaker A:Morrell, whose film Honeydew premieres at this year's Tribeca.
Speaker B:Humor, heart and art, and putting them together in one place.
Speaker B:You know, I was very inspired by the theme of how two different characters embody the light and the dark.
Speaker B:Like if you think of the yin yang, you know, to answer the question of can life be sweet again?
Speaker B:Again, not that I claim to answer it, but there is sweetness in the little moments.
Speaker A:The journey of Honey June from just last year's Tribeca to this year's premiere.
Speaker A:As your debut feature.
Speaker A:With such a fast turnaround time, and as I just said, a first time feature filmmaker, how did you navigate the question of knowing when the film was finished?
Speaker A:First of all, are you at a point where you feel as though it is finished?
Speaker B:Yes, it is finished.
Speaker B:I am very happy to say we have delivered the film to the Tribeca Festival.
Speaker B:And, yeah, it's one year exactly to the day.
Speaker B:The pitch was June 7, and the premiere will be June 7 this year.
Speaker B:And it's funny, this film, it sort of poured out of me.
Speaker B:I took a real trip to this island in the Azores, off of the coast of Portugal.
Speaker B:I didn't plan for that to become a film, but a lot of things happened during that trip that inspired me, because as a storyteller, what I'm inspired by is life and the light and dark of life and putting it together, the humor and the poetry, you know, the things that make you laugh and feel.
Speaker B:And I like to take audiences on a rollercoaster of those feelings and make you laugh and make you cry and, you know, feel alive.
Speaker B:So these things on the trip, you know, I would see things and get inspired.
Speaker B:And then I came home and the script just poured out of me.
Speaker B:Then it got selected for the Torino Film Lab, the Comedy Lab.
Speaker B:And so I went and workshopped the film with comedians.
Speaker B:So we got to, like, improvised scenes and all this kind of stuff that, you know, it's almost like.
Speaker B:It's almost like it was preparing it for a quick development.
Speaker B:Because when you improvise and when you work with actors while you're in the script writing phase, it just helps you, like, push it forward in a different way.
Speaker B:It makes it alive.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:And then it got selected for the Sina Quannon lab, and then it got selected for the Tribeca pitch for untold stories with AT&T.
Speaker B:And so when you asked if I was ready, part of winning that award, which is the biggest production award in the world is you have to make the film in one year.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's the deal.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So ready or not, you know, you got to do.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, I was ready, I felt ready.
Speaker B:And that's.
Speaker B:That's now it's done.
Speaker A:And as for feeling ready and feeling done with it, beyond your own instincts, who could you trust in that process when.
Speaker A:Because when you're so close to the material, who can become trusted in determining when you reach that final cut?
Speaker B:That's a beautiful question.
Speaker B:I mean, trust just makes me think about all the creative collaboration involved in making a film.
Speaker B:But this film, because, you know, as I described to you, like the process before leading up to the pitch, it was very solitary.
Speaker B:You know, writing can be very solitary.
Speaker B:And then people start to trickle in with the lab and the comedians and the, you know, the Tudors.
Speaker B:But when you're making the film, suddenly this whole team starts to join.
Speaker B:So, like the day of the pitch, there's just two people on that stage.
Speaker B:It was me and my amazing producer, Andrea Nunes, in Portugal.
Speaker B:So there's just the two of us standing there on the stage, no crew attached, no cast attached.
Speaker B:From that moment in June until we shot in November, we gathered an entire cast and crew and every single person who helped make this film real brought like a part of their soul, their talent, their love, their care, their time, their very hard work into the film.
Speaker B:And you, you what?
Speaker B:I mean, I've heard someone say, like, you know, pick the best people and then trust them to do what they do.
Speaker B:And there's a lot of that involved.
Speaker B:It's like you have to find creative collaborators that you connect with, that you respect and admire their work, and then together you create something new that neither one of you would do alone.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I had immense trust in my collaborators.
Speaker B:I worked with an incredible cinematographer, Ines Gowland.
Speaker B:She also went to nyu Tisch Grad Film.
Speaker B:She's from Argentina.
Speaker B:My editor also went to NYU Tisch Grad Film, Harry Chepka.
Speaker B:And then I worked with an amazing crew entirely in Portugal that the production company Wonder Maria Films worked with and found the best people.
Speaker B:And then in New York, I did post and I did color with an amazing colorist, Marcie Robinson, at Nice Shoes.
Speaker B:She's done like, you know, sorry, baby, a real pain.
Speaker B:Like, we have Oscar winning films, you know, in our creative collaborators resumes.
Speaker B:Also, my sound designer, Eli Cohen from Nocturnal Sound, also just did like an Oscar, you know, shortlisted short.
Speaker B:And these are the Collaborators I got to work with.
Speaker B:So you can imagine I trusted everybody.
Speaker B:Also my composers from retail space.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:Everybody's bringing, like, their stamp to their artwork.
Speaker B:But within my vision and the world of Honey June.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was beautiful.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Because even though it's your vision, you just simply can't be with everyone at every single moment, keeping track of what they're doing.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:And as for the title, Honey June, I love the word play because it's both playful, meaningful.
Speaker A:But how did you come up with it first?
Speaker B:That one also just poured out of me because, you know, this.
Speaker B:This mother and daughter, they come to this romantic island and they're grieving, but they're surrounded by happy honeymooners.
Speaker B:And I just thought, like, that's the kind of contrast that creates comedy and emotion for me.
Speaker B:And that's what life feels like.
Speaker B:You know, it's both.
Speaker B:And so I just thought it was funny that they'd be, you know, this kind of odd couple out surrounded by these happy honeymooners.
Speaker B:And then the daughter's name is June and the mom is Persian.
Speaker B:And the word June in Persian means, like, my dear.
Speaker B:It's like a term of affection that you say, you know, you call your loved ones.
Speaker B:So I just thought it was perfect.
Speaker B:And it's also the word honey.
Speaker B:It makes me think of sweetness.
Speaker B:And the real question that drove the making of this film was when hard things happen, can life still be sweet?
Speaker B:And these characters are trying to find that in different ways.
Speaker B:And for me, it was an exploration.
Speaker B:I think you make a film probably because you're trying to answer a question for yourself.
Speaker B:I'm not claiming the film has all the answers, but, you know, it explores them anyway.
Speaker B:And it really was like, can I find the sweetness of being alive?
Speaker B:And when you have loss in your life, it can feel that the sweetness is taken away, but it can also make the sweetness even sweeter because you realize how precious it is to be alive and how special it is to be here now in our bodies, able to live and swim in the ocean and flirt.
Speaker B:So that's what it's about.
Speaker A:Since probably you already know how fascinated I am and how much in love with cinematography.
Speaker A:There is this really interesting visual choice you make by switching to vertical framing at certain moments.
Speaker A:And it immediately induced for me that touristy experience, that phone camera, instastory feeling.
Speaker A:Can you shed some light on the decision behind this approach?
Speaker A:Since even though we've been using Nvidia, seeing smartphones in films for way too long, and yet it very rarely feels natural.
Speaker B:Oh, well, thank you for asking about that.
Speaker B:You know, I'm glad it felt natural because it was.
Speaker B:That was an iPhone that was shot with.
Speaker B:And basically the reason why is because I did want to capture that real feeling of what it's like to take a trip.
Speaker B:You know, I love travel movies and like, it's such a metaphor, a trip, you know, for life, for a film.
Speaker B:It's like, you know, there's.
Speaker B:You start somewhere and you get taken somewhere new.
Speaker B:And I like to take you on a ride as an audience member.
Speaker B:And so it just felt very natural that, like, you know, when you're on a trip, you're capturing the world through your eyes.
Speaker B:And it's brings us closer to the characters to see it through their eyes and to feel a little bit raw and a little messy because one of the things I love, you know, this was my first feature and I discovered a rule that I'm going to have in every feature, probably because I love to have one place where you can be really free and really open to inspiration in the moment.
Speaker B:Because, you know, my film, it's very.
Speaker B:There's like a form to a formalism to my cinematography and there's a lot of thought behind it.
Speaker B:But it's so great when you're in the moment and you have a camera and like a kid, you can just grab something that feels fresh and exciting and it brings this energy to the film.
Speaker B:And we also shot with real Super 8 film as well, because a big part of the story is the memory of the dad.
Speaker B:And film, to me, is just perfect for a story that's about memory and also about capturing the way the light hits and the way that, you know, things feel both alive and like, you know, that they're already passing you by and already becoming a memory.
Speaker B:So we shot with film, we shot with iPhone and we shot with Arri Alexa.
Speaker A:Incredible.
Speaker A:And on the emotional side of things, grief itself, of course, often forces people into proximity, I would say, when they might otherwise just drift apart.
Speaker A:So first of all, what interested you about putting mother and daughter together in this specific pressure cooker of loss and travel, which both come with their different complexities and complications?
Speaker B:Great question.
Speaker B:I feel that, first of all, it just felt like the perfect premise for the kind of stories I like to tell, which are darkly funny, they are emotional and they are life affirming.
Speaker B:And so this is sort of like a perfect vehicle for the kind of moments that I find funny and interesting and beautiful.
Speaker B:And I also like.
Speaker B:My thing as a director is humor, heart and art and putting them together in one place.
Speaker B:You know, I was very inspired by the theme of how two different characters embody the light and the dark.
Speaker B:Like, if you think of the yin yang, you know, the mother character, the way she approaches grief in life is to be in the shadow side.
Speaker B:She wants to connect over the pain.
Speaker B:All she can see everywhere she looks is the pain right now and the darkness.
Speaker B:The daughter, her reaction to grief is to run towards the light and to find pleasure and to flirt and to feel alive again.
Speaker B:And so you have these two halves of a whole, but ultimately the yin yang is both and life is both.
Speaker B:And so these two characters have to switch places, come together in order to feel fully alive.
Speaker B:They can't have just one or the other.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And this aforementioned mother daughter relationship is already quite beautifully, dare I say, achingly complex.
Speaker A:And something you've added to this as an additional layer is a sort of language barrier between June and Leila, thanks to June naturally wanting to learn or and speak Farsi.
Speaker A:Was this a part of the story from the get go as an additional linguistic divide in carrying the story or how did this come about?
Speaker B:That's such an interesting question.
Speaker B:I think that we're all speaking our own languages.
Speaker B:We're all a different universe.
Speaker B:And just to be understood is a miracle.
Speaker B:Even the reason you make films is to try to communicate something that you can't do with a sentence by itself.
Speaker B:You have to watch a whole film to feel something that I don't have words for.
Speaker B:And so I think that by externalizing these kind of feelings in a film, in a story, you know, you, you, you create, like you said, these moments where it's like, okay, how do I create that feeling?
Speaker B:There's a literal, you know, generation gap and language gap between characters.
Speaker B:So I think that I like the idea that we reveal our humanness and all the ways we're really alike with these, you know, seeming differences.
Speaker B:So these characters travel to a different country.
Speaker B:You know, they're in the Azores in Portugal.
Speaker B:They meet a tour guide.
Speaker B:He's Portuguese, you know, the mom is Persian.
Speaker B:The daughter is mixed, and she grew up in the States.
Speaker B:But underneath it all, we're all human.
Speaker B:We all have loss, we all have love, we all have pain, we all want pleasure.
Speaker B:You know, it's like, to me, those contrasts just make those shine even brighter.
Speaker B:And also creates a great contrast for dark comedy and moments of making fun and making fun of.
Speaker B:Also when someone tries to say something in a language that's not their own and something even more funny or poetic comes Out.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Beautiful.
Speaker A:And there are these moments where also the political climate seeps into there bubble of grief.
Speaker A:I know it's a big question, but how do you see this speaking to you, writing and making films and how we can or cannot separate this from our private lives and somewhat getting away from reality?
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:Well, for me, I mean, it felt very authentic to the characters and to the story.
Speaker B:You have Lila who had to leave Iran when she was little because of the Iranian revolution.
Speaker B:And she as a character has this longing for a home that she no longer has.
Speaker B:And that longing is maybe intensified after the loss of her husband.
Speaker B:And she's doing something that many people today are very familiar with.
Speaker B:Constantly scrolling Instagram, you know, looking for.
Speaker B:For news.
Speaker B:And a lot of it is bad news.
Speaker B:And it's kind of.
Speaker B:It goes back to that thematic question that, you know, when bad things happen, like how can you enjoy life, you know, despite.
Speaker B:Despite everything.
Speaker B:And that's something these characters are trying to do both on a personal level and, you know, in the world.
Speaker B:And the film also thematically really embodies that particular subject of woman life, freedom.
Speaker B:Because even if you just look at those three words by themselves, it's very connected to what the film is about.
Speaker B:And it's about being free in their bodies, being aware that they're alive and celebrating that they're free and alive and making the most of their lives despite living with pain and loss.
Speaker B:And that's at least that's June's message.
Speaker B:You know, she'd like to everyone to please enjoy life and wear a bikini.
Speaker B:That's her main message right now.
Speaker A:And we often think, especially growing up, but I think later as well, that our parents lives are pretty much what we know of, even though it's only a fragment of even their adult life and the life we live together.
Speaker A:And there are of course, different things June discovers about her mother and late father.
Speaker A:Hope this works as a segue.
Speaker A:But the film is, as for the runtime, way under one and a half hours, a little over an hour, plus the credits, of course.
Speaker A:But at the same time it feels so incredibly patient.
Speaker A:So how did you think of the realizations the characters can make and the amount of realizations they can make about one another and the way we can learn about them as audience while at the same time it just doesn't fall apart?
Speaker B:Oh, I mean, yes, it's something you said really connects to this.
Speaker B:You know, the pacing is patient and gives room for things to unfold even while the film is short.
Speaker B:And I think it's Because I'm inspired by life.
Speaker B:And those moments where we make a discovery about someone we love or ourselves, those moments where a quiet epiphany happens inside us can happen in just a moment.
Speaker B:It can be that moment where you're sitting there looking at the sea, suddenly seeing things from a different perspective.
Speaker B:It can be that moment when you decide to get up and go in the water.
Speaker B:It can be that moment when you're sitting in the sun, enjoying the corn, just being.
Speaker B:And that's kind of, in a way, what the film ultimately, you know, to answer the question of can life be sweet again?
Speaker B:Again, not that I claim to answer it, but there is sweetness in the little moments.
Speaker A:There is something both funny and heartbreaking about how we have not just idealized pictures of our parents in our heads, but expectations about pretty much everything.
Speaker A:Even how, for instance, they should grieve.
Speaker A:Even though you aspire to be as realistic and down to earth as possible.
Speaker A:Did you ever find yourself wanting to justify their choices to us, to the audience?
Speaker A:Or what was it like staying committed to letting them be messy and at times contradictory in their grief because it's all a part of it?
Speaker B:Yeah, no, I really.
Speaker B:I love that there's a few different aspects of it I'd love to answer.
Speaker B:I mean, one is that, you know, how do we even claim to know who our parents are?
Speaker B:When do we even know who ourselves are?
Speaker B:Like, these characters are not only discovering things about each other, but also about themselves.
Speaker B:And like you said, it can be contradictory.
Speaker B:Even though I described them each as, like, this sort of starting off as this sort of side of the yin yang, that doesn't mean that they don't cross over or have different sides of themselves.
Speaker B:And of course, they do in the film.
Speaker B:And in terms of just like, that line between telling a story and being true to what feels real in life, I think stories almost capture, like, the core truth, you know, if it feels emotionally true.
Speaker B:That's what matters to me more than it being maybe like something direct I've been inspired by.
Speaker B:In life, it takes on its own life.
Speaker B:I swear, like movies, they have their own life.
Speaker B:And like, what it was in the script and then what it was in the shoot and then in the edit, and then when the audience experiences it is all different.
Speaker B:Because one of the things I'm most excited about is when you share it with an audience, it's now in their hands to feel whatever it is they take away from the film.
Speaker B:And then when they come share it with me, sometimes I'm surprised by what they felt and saw into it, you know, that I didn't even.
Speaker B:I wasn't even conscious of.
Speaker B:And I just can't wait to discover what those things are.
Speaker B:And we're all bringing our own complex human stories.
Speaker B:And, yeah, I would be honored to hear people's impressions of the work that myself and my team created to share with them.
Speaker A:Lilian, thank you so, so much for your time.
Speaker A:And I can't wait for everyone to see the film.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:This was such a pleasure with such thought provoking and, and rich questions, and I can't wait to share it.
Speaker B:Thank you.
