2025 Tribeca Festival Archives - Su-City Pictures East, LLC

For Script Magazine

Susan Kouguell chats with the award-winning writer and director about her feature film debut, blending lightness and darkness in her writing, and more.

About Honeyjoon: Persian-Kurdish Lela (Amira Casar) and her sensual American daughter June (Ayden Mayeri) travel to a romantic Azorean Island, for the one-year anniversary of Dad’s death. They planned this trip to be together, but Lela and June have opposite views about why they’re there, how to grieve, and June’s tiny bikini. Surrounded by honeymooners, doom-scrolling for Woman Life Freedom, and taken on a tour by their hot philosophical guide, João (José Condessa); Lela and June find each other… coming back to life.

Lilian Mehrel won the 2024 AT&T Tribeca Untold Stories award for Honeyjoon. She was selected for the 2025 SFFILM Rainin Grant, TorinoFilmLab 2024 ComedyLab, Cine Qua Non 2024 Storylines Lab, Warner Media TFI Co/Lab, and a Marcie Bloom Fellowship. Her films have premiered at Tribeca, Clermont-Ferrand, and the American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at Cannes. She earned her MFA from NYU Tisch Grad Film, and her BA from Dartmouth with a Senior Fellowship, and is a PD Soros Fellow.

It was a great pleasure to speak with Lilian Mehrel about her debut feature Honeyjoon, which she describes as a sexy, emotional comedy about … a mother-daughter trip. It was quite evident during our lively discussion that Mehrel is passionate about this film and filmmaking itself.

Kouguell: Congratulations on your film and receiving the AT&T Tribeca Untold Stories grant of $1 million. Tell me how this award enabled you to bring Honeyjoon to the screen.

Mehrel: I wrote the script on my own and then found myself a wonderful, Oscar-shortlisted producer, Andreia Nunes. It turns out all we needed was a million dollars to make the movie (she laughs)—once we received the money everything quickly fell into place.

I developed the script at the TorinoFilmLab and the Cine Qau Non Lab. We were selected as one of the five finalists. You pitch live in front of hundreds of people. It was an amazing experience, and a high-pressure situation, but it was a hint of the future audience and their expectations. That same day we pitched, the judges deliberated, and we made it, and then got selected for the Tribeca award.

Kouguell: Let’s talk about your inspiration for the story and how the script evolved.

Mehrel: As a filmmaker, the stories I love to tell are funny and moving. I went on a trip to a beautiful island in the Azores, when I was going through something hard. There, I realized the very dark and funny premise of having a mother and daughter grieving on this beautiful, romantic island surrounded by honeymooners. There was this blend of light and dark, and I was thinking about when hard things happen, life can still be sweet, and being alive means all those things.

Kouguell: The screenplay was developed at the TorinoFilmLab. Tell me about this experience.

Mehrel: We had workshops in Torino, Italy; it was an inspiring location. It was the first year they were doing the comedy lab. One of the things they were looking for was features to connect with a wider audience by using comedy as a way to bring people to cinema.

Kouguell: That’s so interesting because on the surface Honeyjoon leans more to drama; the humor/comedy avoids the slapstick and predictable comedy tropes.

Mehrel: The process was amazing.They brought in four comedians, who improvised scenes with us. One of my tutors, the filmmaker Laura Piana, played a therapist and had her ‘patients’ played by our characters, talk about their childhood and parents. We discovered deep thematic things about the characters. It expedited my development and writing process, seeing actors embodying scenes.

The Cine Qau Non Lab focused on the skeleton of the story, helped with pitching, and also shooting on the island, with ideas on what I needed to do to tell the story.

Kouguell: The film was shot on location in San Miguel, Azores, Portugal. What was that experience like as your first feature and shooting on location, not to mention in another country where you are reliant on the weather and light with all your exterior shots?

Mehrel: It was an incredible experience and made me a stronger director. I had an amazing team, working with collaborators and a great cast. It was very magical.

Kouguell: The beautiful and tranquil locations contrast—even highlight—the tensions in this poignant mother and daughter relationship.

Mehrel: I love that you used the word ‘contrast’—comedy lives in contrast. You have these characters going to a romantic island, they’re in paradise but they’re grieving. They reveal the absurdities of being human often with humor.

Kouguell: We were talking about your being a daughter of immigrants from a mixed background, living in a multicultural world. This is a major theme of the film, which is successfully executed, particularly because this experience is quite universal.

Mehrel: I’m glad you said that because I’ve been getting reactions from diverse audiences, telling me that they see themselves and their family on screen despite their various backgrounds.

Kougell: As a daughter of immigrants, I definitely related, but also to the mother and daughter relationship, while often so funny, it’s honest and raw. Also, placing mother and daughter on an unfamiliar island, away from their comfort zones, forces various issues, including their generational differences and culture clashes to the foreground.

Mehrel: I love road trip movies, and this film is about characters going on a trip. When you go somewhere unfamiliar you discover new things but there are also those differences within this one family, external and internal differences, but it highlights their connectedness underneath. These are two women who have different approaches to grief.

Kouguell: Final thoughts?

Mehrel: This is a sexy darkly funny life-affirming move. I don’t claim to have answers, but I explore questions. We shot some of the film on Super Eight; those visuals make it feel like a memory; and this idea of fleeting memories and moments passing is also a metaphor for this story.

Tribeca Film Festival 2025: Interview with ‘On a String’ Writer/Director/Star Isabel Hagen for Script Magazine

Susan Kouguell chats with writer, director, producer, and star Isabel Hagen about her film debut, how she found stand-up comedy amidst her Julliard training in classical viola, and more.

It was a pleasure to speak with the multi-hyphenate Writer/Director/Producer/EP and Star Isabel Hagen about her first feature, On A String, during the Tribeca Festival.

As a classically trained violist myself, (but not Julliard-trained like Hagen) we shared many funny—OK, sometimes tragically funny stories of our musician experiences, but she’s a professional stand-up comedian and thankfully I am not—as well as the profound influence music has on our respective writing and filmmaking.

Isabel Hagen is a nationally touring stand-up comedian and classically trained violist based in New York City. As a stand-up, she has been featured twice on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and as a New Face of Comedy at the Just for Laughs festival in Montréal. Isabel started stand-up immediately after earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in viola performance from The Juilliard School. As a violist, she has played in the orchestra of many Broadway shows, and worked with artists such as Bjork, Max Richter, Japanese Breakfast, Steve Reich, and Vampire Weekend.

About On A String: Isabel (Isabel Hagen) is a young, Juilliard-trained violist still living at home with her parents in the heart of New York City. She’s trying to make a living playing gigs with her friends but when her toxic ex-boyfriend reappears, who also happens to be the Philharmonic’s “newest, hottest cellist,” he informs her of a viola opening in the prestigious orchestra. Nothing can go wrong, right?

Kouguell: Tell me about your decision to transition from music to filmmaking.

Hagen: It was a couple of things. Partly it was my deep love for stand-up comedy, and I had a repetitive stress injury in my hand from hours of daily practicing, so I had to take time off playing. I tried open mic, and I knew that it was something I wanted to explore. After graduating Juilliard, I did more stand-up. Writing for stand-up got the wheels turning to writing other things, and then I did the web series.

Kouguell: I watched your five-part web series is a violist, which is not only so funny, but it captures the lives of classical musicians with all their flaws, quirks, painful rejections, and honest realizations. Did you study screenwriting/writing and/or filmmaking?

Hagen: No. I learned by doing. It came out of doing stand-up comedy.

Kouguell: As the writer, director and star of this film, how did you approach the filmmaking process?

Hagen: There was a time I thought I’d bring in another director, but ultimately it was such a specific story, I felt that people had to have a deep understanding of this world. It felt right to direct it as a first feature.

Kouguell: You mentioned that it’s such a specific story, which it is, yet it feels universal.

Hagen: Sometimes the more specific you get—and in this film, about a classical musician navigating a specific world, which many might find unfamiliar—the universality aspect was important. That experience of following your dreams, accepting unexpected challenges and limitations, is something most of us feel.

Kouguell: How did your stand-up comedy evolve?

Hagen: Years ago, when my brother watched George Carlin on TV, I became interested. I marveled at it. When I had a little space in my schedule at Julliard, I tried it out. Initially it was never a goal to become a stand-up comedian.

Kouguell: Let’s discuss your writing process.

Hagen: It’s always driven by music. I start by latching onto a piece or a song or the essence of it. It will inspire a scene I want to capture. So much of this film, I was writing with music in mind, such as Schubert’s Death and the Maiden. I draw inspiration from music.

Both classical music and pop songs follow a strict form, and that’s what makes things interesting. I wanted this whole film to feel like a piece of music; recapitulations, incorporating certain motifs, the structure, and so on.

Kouguell: We’ve been talking about your role as the observer when performing as a violist at various events such as weddings. You mentioned that On A String is not about someone driven by a desire for success, but rather by a need for true connection to the world around her, with no idea how to find it.

Hagen: I always felt like an observer, which is not necessarily bad or good. I’m always watching how people talk and at certain times I wanted to mimic it. So much of comedy is observational and I realized a lot of work I did was the role of the observer like watching a narcissistic conductor and watching people how they behaved.

Kouguell: The film features live-captured musical performances, and the musician characters are almost entirely played by trained musicians, including your real-life brother, pianist Oliver Hagen, who portrays your character’s brother in the film. How was it to work with him?

Hagen: Working with Oliver was great. He’s not a trained actor but he is an accomplished musician who I have always looked up to.

Kouguell: What’s next for you?

Hagen: I’m continuing to tour as a standup and performing with the indie rock band Vampire Weekend, And working on new ideas for another film.

To learn more about Hagen’s projects visit her website.

Su-City Pictures East, LLC

Screenplay & Film Consulting By Susan Kouguell

Category: 2025 Tribeca Festival

Susan’s Interview with ‘Honeyjoon’ Writer/Director Lilian Mehrel at Tribeca Festival

Susan’s Interview with ON A STRING writer, director, producer, and star Isabel Hagen

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