Tendaberry

Haley Elizabeth Anderson's Tendaberry is a stunning, emotionally raw portrait of a young woman's life in contemporary New York City, crafted with a documentary-like intimacy that blurs fiction and reality.

Kota Johan delivers a heartbreaking and deeply authentic performance as Dakota, a 20-something singer-songwriter navigating love, loss, and survival after her boyfriend Yuri is forced to return to war-torn Ukraine. Through Dakota's small triumphs and devastating setbacks, Anderson captures the chaos, beauty, and melancholy of everyday existence, using handheld cinematography and archival footage to weave a sensory, time-collapsing tapestry that feels both ephemeral and timeless.

What makes Tendaberry extraordinary is its fearless embrace of imperfection, flowing through seasons and emotions with poetic fluidity, as Dakota's voiceover and found footage bridge past, present, and future. Anderson's lyrical structure, unforced progression, and grounding in urban transience evoke the spirit of works like Beba and American Honey, yet the film carves its own identity with raw immediacy and tactile emotion. As Dakota dances, sings, struggles, and dreams, Tendaberry becomes not just a story of personal growth but a cosmic reflection on memory, place, and existence-one that lingers long after the final frame.

Watched a screening in Berlin January 6, 2025.

This movie is a fantastic achievement. It creates its own dimension of sadness, which was difficult to bear but for me turned into a cathartic experience for which I am grateful.

As for another user review: Our mistakes and how we deal with them are what interests me in such a work of art. How close narrative, the hybrid form and acting get to real life achieves quite an emotional impact. In comparison, even though it is a masterpiece in its own right, for me "Anora" pales.

Before I saw it, the title and referencing Laura Nyro seemed very self-confident, bordering on presumptuousness. But it does not fail this ambition.

Moody, hanging out, docufiction kind of vibe with some very nice-looking parts here and there, in contrast to others that were very jarring. The only problem was I could not resonate at all to the main character. Dakota is immature, naive and rude. Which makes sense given her age and her generation, but I have nothing in common with the culture, the lifestyle or the thinking so I found a lot of her choices, beliefs and attitudes either uncomfortable, unpleasant or just plain ridiculous. I was willing to make allowances in the beginning cause she seemed like a sweet kid with big dreams in a very harsh environment. But things go awry after she loses Yuri and she never seemed to have any close female friends. Even those she calls friends are not and she does not really bond with them or truly care. So might be a me problem although I am not so sure. I thought this was aiming or going towards the Anora kind of vibe or at least reaching out to the Anoras of the world, only I liked Anora and I even sympathized with her, but this did not happen with Dakota. Basically Kota is not my vibe.

I'm not afraid to watch new, experimental films. But they have to resonate with me. And more importantly, they have to tell a story. Well, this one turned out to be a total waste of time. And I watched over an hour of it. I kept waiting for something to actually happen. It sort of did. But it sure took a long time to tell a story.

I thought the characters were horrible. I couldn't relate to anyone in the film. Especially the lead. She was a sour, nasty person who was going nowhere in life. And all the other characters were equally unlikable.

Then there was the camerawork. Horrible. It was like it was filmed with someone who had ADD. The camera kept jumping around and it almost made me dizzy. Plus the film was filled with annoying jump cuts. And then the filmmaker tried to weave in a bunch of historical footage of Coney Island and Brooklyn. It had absolutely nothing to do with the story.

If you want to waste a couple hours of your time, you'd be better off sitting by a lake or river and just stare into the void. Such a waste of time. Better luck next time guys!

--MovieJunkieMark.

Watched this at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Themes of loneliness and isolation have been explored in stories of NYC and Tendaberry does have issues on feeling scattered and dry but as a whole, the core emotions, the direction, and a strong lead performance from Kota Johan.

Filmmaker Haley Elizabeth Anderson direction on capturing the themes and atmosphere was pretty good as Anderson's approach to the writing felt realistic and nature. The dialogue between the characters and so forth felt poetic and nature to what is happening in the scene which creates a nature yet realistic vibe to the setting. The camerawork and presentation is pretty good but personally, there were some shots that were a little off-putting and there were too many close-up shots.

The performances are solid as many of the performances, while might not be perfect, are good on capturing the essence of loneliness and reality. The narrative has strong elements which I liked but I think it does get a little stuck and too scattered through it's second act as if it feels a little lost. The characters were okay to observe but I wasn't fully able to connect with them emotionally as if I would like to.

As a whole, despite it's flaws, it still remains strong.