Tahara (2022)
Director: Olivia Peace Run Time: 78 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2022
Starring: Bernadette Quigley, Daniel Taveras, Madeline Grey DeFreece, Rachel Sennott, Shlomit Azoulay
Country: United States
Language: English
About the film:
Premiered at the 2020 Slamdance Film Festival. In this complex dark comedy, a funeral becomes a battleground between best friends Carrie Lowstein and Hannah Rosen. When their former Hebrew school classmate commits suicide, the two girls attend her funeral as well as the “Teen Talk-back” session hosted by their synagogue, designed to be an opportunity for them to understand grief through Judaism. Hannah, more interested in impressing her crush Tristan, convinces Carrie to practice kissing with her, unlocking feelings that turn Carrie’s world upside down.
“a canny, compact portrait of teenage insensitivity, all the more riveting for its biting dialogue and funny performances”
—Teo Bugbee for The New York Times
About the filmmakers:
Olivia Peace is an award winning interdisciplinary artist and film director from Detroit whose work is heavily informed by hip hop, the dreamspace, and a deep appreciation for garishness. They hold a master’s degree in Interactive Media and Games from The University of Southern California where they specialized in Worldbuilding. Their thesis project “Against Reality” is a roomscale interactive experience built using AI neural networks.
A feature debut for both Peace and writer Jess Zeidman, Tahara (2022) premiered at the 2020 Slamdance Film Festival, screened as part of the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival, and went on to win awards around the world.
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