Tendaberry (2024)
South Brooklyn has long served as fertile ground for American independent cinema, a neighbourhood dense enough with working-class texture and immigrant history to make almost any story feel lived-in before the first line of dialogue is spoken. Tendaberry (2024) plants itself squarely in that tradition, following 23-year-old Dakota as she tries to hold her life together in the shadow of Coney Island while her boyfriend returns to Ukraine, where the ongoing Russian invasion turns a temporary separation into something far heavier. The film arrives at a moment when several American indie dramas have attempted to reckon with the war in Ukraine as a personal rather than political reality, a difficult tonal balance to strike at the best of times. Whether Tendaberry manages it is another question entirely.
The film is the feature debut of writer-director Haley Elizabeth Anderson, produced through a cluster of smaller independent outfits including Neon Heart Productions, Flies Collective, and Spark Features. Working outside the studio system on what is clearly a modest budget, Anderson has crafted a film with an obvious visual identity, all grainy summer light and the faded seaside grandeur of the Coney Island boardwalk. The location-first instinct is a recognisable one in American indie filmmaking, recalling the way Jonah Hill used Los Angeles street culture as both backdrop and emotional register in mid90s, or how Woody Allen drew Barcelona into the emotional lives of his characters in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The risk, as always, is that a strong sense of place can become a substitute for a strong sense of story, and at 117 minutes, Tendaberry gives itself plenty of rope.
Leading the film is Kota Johan as Dakota, a musician nursing both romantic grief and professional ambition in roughly equal measure. Johan is a relative newcomer to features, and the film rests an enormous amount of weight on her ability to carry long, dialogue-light stretches. Alongside her are Yuri Pleskun as the boyfriend pulled back to a country at war, with supporting turns from Stella Tompkins, Erika Kutalia, and Megan Lee Dejesus filling out Dakota's South Brooklyn world. It is the kind of ensemble that feels assembled from genuine relationships rather than casting calls, which can give a debut feature warmth and spontaneity, though it can equally leave certain scenes undersupported when the material demands more. For those who enjoy watching young performers find their feet in naturalistic, low-budget American drama, there is something here to appreciate, even if the film as a whole is a polished but unremarkable entry in that tradition. There is a clear emotional ambition at work, and a genuine attempt to say something about distance, loss, and what it means to keep making art when the world feels like it is collapsing somewhere just out of frame.
My interest in Haley Elizabeth Anderson’s 2024 picture Tendaberry was entirely piqued by its location. Coney Island is the iconic, backdrop of one of my absolute favourite films, The Warriors, so I was naturally primed to see what this new indie drama might do with that famous stretch of boardwalk.
Initially, it seems to promise a rather charming, intimate romance. We follow Dakota, a young woman chasing her musical dreams in New York, who strikes up a connection with a local man. It’s a sweet, grounded setup that had me genuinely hoping for a heartfelt, character-driven journey.
However, the narrative takes a sharp, rather jarring turn. The love interest is forced to return to Ukraine to care for his ailing father, only to become tragically entangled in the Russian invasion. While the real-world gravity of this conflict is undeniable, the film struggles to weave it seamlessly into its otherwise modest, indie-romance framework. The pacing grinds to a halt, and what was once a snappy, engaging setup devolves into a bit of a slog. We are left watching the protagonist busking on the streets for extended stretches, and frankly, her vocal performances are just "ok". The burden of the film's second half falls heavily on the shoulders of Kota Johan, who is essentially left to carry the narrative alone, but the material simply isn't strong enough to support the weight.
This is where the picture truly falls apart for me. When a film pivots so heavily into a solitary character study, it absolutely demands a lead performance of magnetic, undeniable strength to hold the screen and keep the audience invested in the silence. Unfortunately, Tendaberry just doesn't have that. While I appreciate the ambition of isolating Dakota to examine her internal grief and artistic frustration, the execution feels hollow. The script relies far too much on the audience projecting emotion onto a protagonist who isn't given enough compelling, active material to work with, resulting in a frustrating exercise in watching someone exist in a state of perpetual, unvarnished melancholy.
Tendaberry is a film with a beautiful setting and a well-meaning heart, but it is fundamentally undone by its own structural ambitions. Anderson clearly had a poignant story to tell about love, distance, and the harsh realities of the modern world, but the execution is a bit of a mess. It mistakes lingering shots and busking montages for profound character development, leaving the viewer disconnected and checking the clock. It is a mildly interesting, albeit deeply flawed, cinematic experiment.
Tendaberry will likely find an audience among viewers drawn to quiet, character-focused indie work, and Anderson is clearly a filmmaker with a genuine eye for place and mood. A debut feature is rarely a final word, and the ambition on display here, however unevenly realised, suggests there is something worth watching in her future work. Films about young women adrift in creative and emotional limbo have a long and honourable tradition, from the introspective ache of The Perks of Being a Wallflower to the long shadows cast over young lives in Youth, and Tendaberry is clearly reaching for that company. It does not quite get there, but reaching is at least a start. Sometimes, though, a beautiful backdrop is just a backdrop.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2026-08-08
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Tendaberry (2024) on YouTube
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