Nun's Beach
2025 · 13m · USA
Directed by Kate diRienzi
Genres: drama, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: contemplative, tender
When introduced to her fellow nun's family, Sister Flora questions her romantic relationship with Sister Muriel and her devotion to God. Built from the director's own family folklore about two nuns — her great-aunt and her lifelong companion — who lived together for fifty years.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Family folklore about two nuns who shared fifty years together, treated as parallel faiths rather than contradiction — that's the kind of honest queer history I want more of. The SOTW packaging undersells what sounds like a tender specific film.
Treating queer love and religious devotion as parallel rather than oppositional forms of faith is the productive theological move Sciamma made in Portrait of a Lady on Fire — and the family-folklore origin gives it a tender historical grounding. Quietly ambitious material.
Built from the director's real family history of two nuns who lived together fifty years — that source material is a quiet gift, treating queer love and devotion as parallel faiths rather than collision. Thirteen-minute runtime and 36K views suggests the tenderness is reading.
Reviews
It is a film of breath and gesture, of hands that hover yet never quite touch. The restraint feels like prayer; the longing, like revelation.
She imagines a life where queer love and divine devotion coexist, not in opposition but in parallel, each sustaining the other. The result is less a transgression than a reconciliation, an homage, and an act of spiritual empathy.
Festivals
- National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) 2025, Audience Award
- Montclair Film Festival 2025
- Hamptons International Film Festival 2025