Unholy
2025 · 14m · USA
Directed by Daisy Friedman
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, tender, tense
Noa, a young adult with short bowel syndrome and a complex gastrointestinal disorder, attends her family's Passover Seder for the first time since being put on a feeding tube. She is confronted by well-meaning but pushy family members, malfunctioning medical devices, and a table full of food she cannot eat.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Short bowel syndrome and a feeding tube at a Passover Seder, with the director's own scar used for body-double close-ups — lived-experience cinema in a specific cultural-religious setting is exactly the niche shorts should serve. Sundance/SXSW lineage backs it.
A protagonist with short bowel syndrome attending Passover surrounded by food she cannot eat — Daisy Friedman using her own feeding-tube scar for body-double shots is the precise lived-experience anchor that turns a premise into a film. Sundance and SXSW confirm the read.
Director using her own childhood feeding-tube scar as the body double for close-ups grounds the whole short bowel syndrome premise in lived material — that physical authorship is rare. Fourteen minutes at a Passover Seder is exactly the pressure-cooker setting for the conflict to actually mean something.
Reviews
A miracle... demonstrates remarkable skill in tension-building and ensemble performances. The screenplay is tight as a drum.
One of the most promising shorts of the new year. Nikkanen's performance is subtle and layered, yet truly powerful.
Daisy Friedman Transcends the Student Film
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2025
- SXSW 2025
- Aspen ShortsFest 2025
- Palm Springs ShortFest 2025
- National Film Festival for Talented Youth 2025, Audience Award
- San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2025
- Salute Your Shorts Film Festival 2025