IT
| Section | |
|---|---|
| Original Title | LEMONADE BLESSING |
| English Title | LEMONADE BLESSING |
| Movie Type | |
| Genre | |
| Production Year | 2025 |
| Director | |
| Cast | Jake Ryan, Jeanine Serralles, Michael Oloyede, Miles J. Harvey, Skye Alyssa Friedman |
| Country | USA |
| Movie Length | 100’ |
| Screenplay | |
| Director of Photography | |
| Editor | |
| Music | Daniel Futcher |
| Casting | Rachel Goldman |
| Costume Designer | Nicole Barley |
| Makeup | Cheryl Calo |
| Production Designer | Jared Thomas |
| Sound Designer | Ryan Vaughan, Shubhi Sahni |
| Produced by | Aruba Sulzana, Chris Merola, Raza Rizvi, Samuel Ashurov |
| Production | |
| Festival Contact | |
| International Distribution |
Lemonade Blessing
John has always been the perfect, timid boy for his devout, divorced mother, Mary. His structured life is upended when Mary forces him to enroll in a strict, private Catholic high school. There, John falls head over heels for Lilith, a clever and rebellious classmate who harbors a deep hatred for her own rigid religious upbringing. Desperate to win her heart and maintain their relationship, John is pushed to the brink. Lilith tests his faith and morals through a series of increasingly uncomfortable actions, all in the name of love.
Chris Merola is a writer and filmmaker from Long Island, New York. He’s a recent graduate of the MFA Film and Television Production program at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Lemonade Blessing marks Merola’s feature debut.
Director’s Note
A child is a canvas their parents paint upon, day by day. At some point, we’re handed (or, we wrestle for) the brush, and become the painters of our own incomplete canvases. I made LEMONADE BLESSING as a way of reflecting on what happened before I got the brush—or really, to explore the adolescent period when I first became aware that the brush existed, that it wasn’t yet in my hands.
I believe every film has a skin and a soul. The skin is what gets the person in a theater seat, the soul is what they take with them after the credits roll.
LEMONADE BLESSING’s skin is a raunchy, sacrilegious, playful sex comedy. The stakes are whether John will become sexually active.
LEMONADE BLESSING’s soul is an exploration of child development, conditions of worth, generational trauma, the ways in which young boys receive and internalize sexist
messaging, and the painful fallout for young girls when this messaging is put into practice. The stakes are whether John will transcend his childhood wounds, whether he will
find love and acceptance.
