Tribeca 2026: Lucy Schulman (dir. Ellie Sachs) | Review

In the film’s opening scene, we watch Lucy and her boyfriend Nikhil (Hasan Minhaj), a big-shot author, in what seems to be a picturesque life: The two affectionately talk about a house party they’re planning for their large Manhattan home, but when Nikhil steps upstairs for a minute, Lucy notices that his phone is buzzing for a suspiciously long time. Sure enough, he’s been sexting another woman. But even after Lucy catches her boyfriend cheating, she asks him what she’s been doing wrong, and whether she’s to blame. She meekly suggests couples therapy, but Nikhil shuts the idea down — the problem, he says, is that she’s too nice.

After this point, the film’s trajectory is generally predictable, if you’ve seen Frances Ha, Sex and the City, or any adjacent media. Lucy, 29, works at an indie bookstore that frequently hosts parties for writers and intellectuals in the city, and dreams of being a writer. She hangs out with three friends who seem more successful in their professional and romantic pursuits. Now freshly out of her longest-term relationship, she has to figure out what to do with her job and her love life.

After the breakup, Lucy moves back in with her dad, Peter, which she explains happens every time she ends a relationship. The film’s best moments come from their interactions: Sachs’s performance as Lucy allows the character to be charming even at moments where she should be unlikable. Meanwhile, Cross brings the oddball charms he’s known for from Arrested Development, but underneath his frequent one-liners and bits, you get the sense he’s layering his comedy on thick to help Lucy get over her breakup. “Boys are like buses,” he remarks to cheer her up, “there’s one every 15 minutes.”

The film also makes clear that Lucy and Peter are similar in many ways. As a single dad, Peter’s long been a hopeless romantic, and when Peter obtains the number of a woman in his pilates class, he goes to Lucy for advice on how to open (his original text would have been “Hi do you eat dinner?”). A heartwarming flashback shows us that this has been happening for as long as Lucy can remember: In middle school, Peter asks her whether to send “Hey” or “Hi” to a match on an E-dating site. Lucy, who received a boy’s number after a middle school dance, was wondering the same thing.

After some moments with her father, friends, and a funny montage of Lucy on a series of dates, the film suddenly veers into Before Sunrise territory. After a work party, she serendipitously bumps into James (Thomas Mann) on the street, a guy she’s run into twice before. The two go on an unplanned date that lasts until the next morning, and eventually become entangled.

The film unfortunately loses steam with James’s introduction, even though this seems to be a feature of its construction. Lucy begins to spend all her time with James, who paints for a living, and begins to blow off plans with her friends and her father. But as Lucy gets tunnelvisioned into her new relationship, viewers are held captive in her lovey-dovey honeymoon phase, and it feels like even the film itself forgets about the other characters involved. On paper, this is a powerful way to immerse viewers in Lucy’s experience, but the film’s sense of urgency falls off a cliff.

So it’s a huge relief when eventually the spell is broken, and drama is reintroduced into the story: In her rose-tinted state, Lucy misses best friend (Annabelle Attanasio)’s bridal shower, which she was supposed to plan, and stakes are reintroduced in her friendships, relationship, and career — and this causes Lucy to reevaluate her priorities in life.

Lucy Schulman iterates on a well-worn formula, but it makes up for it by being consistently funny, often heartwarming, and depicts a special father-daughter relationship that really makes it worth a watch. With this film, Sachs (who presented her short Proof of Concept at Tribeca 2023) proves herself to be a first-time talent to watch.

Our team is on site for the 25th Tribeca Film Festival, from June 3 to 14, 2026.