Tendaberry

When her boyfriend goes back to Ukraine to be with his ailing father, 23-year-old Dakota anxiously navigates her precarious new reality, surviving on her own in New York City. Writer-director Haley Elizabeth Anderson’s moving debut feature is an intimately scaled character study and an openhearted love letter to Brooklyn. Tendaberry’s elliptical narrative unfurls in an intricate patchwork of lyrical handheld cinematography, found footage fragments, spectral home movies, and documentary digressions. Anderson devotes the film’s first movement to a tender and clear-eyed portrait of young love before shifting her attention to Dakota’s (Kota Johan) life after loss and her struggles to stay afloat and forge community with fellow migrants in a rapidly gentrifying landscape. Tendaberry sensitively charts Dakota’s inner journey while also looking outward to craft an elegiac portrait of the city she calls home. In a breakout performance, Johan brings Dakota’s delicate but defiant voice to the foreground, both through poetic narration and lovely musical performances. (Sundance Film Festival)