Lilian Mehrel ’09 releases first full-length film ‘Honeyjoon’

Lilian Mehrel ’09 wrote, directed and produced her first full-length film “Honeyjoon,” a romantic comedy drama that premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. Mehrel was the 2024 One Million Dollar Recipient of the AT&T Untold Stories Award, a Tribeca Festival initiative that awards one emerging filmmaker out of five finalists each year with $1 million to develop their pitch into a full-length feature film to premiere at the next year’s festival. 

Sensual and comedic, the film follows a Persian-Kurdish mother Leela and her American daughter June on their Portugal vacation as they navigate different ways of coping with the loss of June’s father. Their tour guide, Jose, is a philosophical surfer. On Jan. 18, the Hopkins Center for the Arts hosted a screening of “Honeyjoon” at Loew Auditorium followed by a discussion with Mehrel.

The Dartmouth sat down with Mehrel to discuss her journey into filmmaking, her process of making “Honeyjoon” and the themes explored in the film. 

What inspired you to pursue filmmaking? 

LM: I was always a visual storyteller ever since I was little. The first time I got my hands on a camera, I was 13, and I borrowed my mom’s camera, and I just started making stuff because I realized there was such a thing as a director.

At Dartmouth, I actually didn’t take a single film class. I started out pre-med, but I was really drawn to storytelling, and it just kept finding me in every way possible. My freshman seminar was in comparative literature; during sophomore summer I took a lot of arts classes and theater and writing; and at some point this idea came to me to write and illustrate a book that ended up being my senior fellowship. It was basically as close to a movie as you could get, just in a book form. Without knowing it, I was practicing for being a professional storyteller away from Dartmouth.

It takes a while to really own who you are as an artist, and to believe that it’s possible. I ended up going to grad school for film. I went to the NYU Tisch Graduate Film program and made a ton of short films there and really got to know my voice. But it’s really crazy, because when I look back at my storyteller voice, even at Dartmouth, it was there all along.

You received the AT&T Untold Stories grant for the film’s production. What was that process like for you?

LM: This is an indie film fairy tale. I won a million dollars to make my debut feature. Basically this script poured out of me, and then it had some magic to it — like it just started getting into everything I applied for. It got into the TorinoFilmLab, which is this incredible film lab in Italy; it got into the Cine Qua Non Lab in Mexico. Then I found out I was a finalist for the biggest film production prize in the world.

That was obviously just an incredible door opening to getting to do what I’ve been, it turns out, trying to do since Dartmouth — which is to share stories with my audiences, make them laugh and make them feel seen.

How did you choose your cast?

LM: One of the reasons why I feel like film is so powerful is because of how much you can say with cinema, with a specific voice and blend of humor and emotion. So I wanted to find a cast who could hold both — who could make us laugh just by being so real and also make us feel things. So I was looking for a really talented cast who is just so natural, you just believe them.

I also think there’s a kind of magic to casting because I was watching the film “Call Me By Your Name” as a cinematography inspiration while I was looking for my cast, and Timothée Chalamet’s mom in that movie is Amira Casar, and she ended up being the mom in “Honeyjoon.” And then for the character of June, she found me — Ayden Mayeri. She read the script, and it just really resonated with her.

For the tour guide José, he’s this hot, philosophical surfer, and there really was just one star that had to be him. He is a huge star in Portugal. His name is José Condessa. He is the star of the hit Portuguese Netflix show “Turn of the Tide,” and that show was shot on the same island in the Azores where I shot “Honeyjoon.” When I got the three actors together, it was like I had chills — like the fictional movie came to life in front of my eyes.

What inspired you to combine the themes of grief and sex?

LM: I think on one level, the symbol of yin-yang is very much at the heart of the “Honeyjoon” themes — the two main characters are very much embodying the duality of light and dark and of life and death in their different responses, their different coping mechanisms for living with loss. And I think at least for me, sometimes when you’re facing something that dark like loss, it almost makes you want to run to the opposite of that. And what’s the opposite of death? Life.  And what makes you feel the most alive? June is looking to feel good again. She’s looking for pleasure. She’s looking to try to celebrate what it means to be alive in your body and enjoy it fully.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.