Tahara

Begrudgingly participating in a mandatory Hebrew school “teen talkback” to process a classmate’s passing, sheepish Carrie (Madeline Grey DeFreece) unexpectedly sparks her queer awakening after a practice lip-lock in the bathroom with her horny and hetero bestie Hannah (Rachel Sennott). Over the course of the hectic and transformative day, the two teens find themselves wrestling with increasingly complicated feelings of mortality, social ranking, and desire.

For her uproarious and incisive generational debut, director Olivia Peace evokes the unique confines of contemporary youth by shooting in a tight 1:1 aspect ratio (a square format emulating an Instagram post) and cheekily articulates the characters’ overwhelming emotional extremes with bursts of buoyant animation. Two megastars on the rise, Sennott and DeFreece embody their roles with visceral precision, exploring the often inexpressible storm of adolescence with a defiantly modern and universal sensibility, along with crackling one-liners and bittersweet confrontations.

—JESSE KNIGHT

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