The Travel Companion is a comedy/drama feature debut from New York City based filmmakers Travis Wood and Alex Mallis, who co-wrote the script with Weston Auburn. The World Premiere was in the U.S. Narrative Competition on June 5, 2025, at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Synopsis: Struggling documentarian Simon (Tristan Turner) relies on the unique perk of his roommate.
Simon (Tristan Turner) and Bruce (Anthony Oberbeck) have been friends since the 3rd grade. They are single, maintain a close relationship and are roommates. Bruce works for an airline that provides a travel companion benefit, which he has generously provided to Simon for quite a while. Simon works for a local advertising agency and is an independent documentarian. This benefit is a huge support to his filmmaking career.
Once Bruce attends an event as Simon’s guest, he meets a filmmaker, Beatrice (Naomi Asa). A relationship develops between them and he spends more time with her, not as available to Simon as he has been before. Simon doesn’t use his time wisely enough to stay away from meddling in Bruce and Beatrice’s relationship and this is troublesome. I became frustrated with his man – child behavior, such as constantly interrupting the date in the living room, even if it is only a meal in front of the television. She was nice and supportive of Simon at first, but it is no wonder Beatrice began to lose her patience after this and multiple other comments he made. Bruce had told him to drop one specific topic, but Simon did not heed the warning and made it totally worse instead.
Naomi Asa provides an excellent performance as Beatrice, outstanding when Simon tells her something very much out of order about her family. She does not have to and stops to emotionally convey a part of her life story. As interesting as the story sounded, the script calls for her to stop and storm off to tell Bruce. I would have preferred to learn more about her rather than to see her run to Bruce right then. This great perk in the film with her performance took a dive back to Simon’s drab life and neediness. The beginning of the end.
This film takes a good look at what one indie filmmaker struggles with to achieve his goals. Turner provides an excellent performance of an artist in crisis.
Other Cast: Dara Messinger, Raheem Roher, Anil Joseph, Daryush Parsi, David H. Smilow, Brit Fryer, Joanna Arnow, Steven Phillips-Horst, Peter Davis, Pete Spooner, Charlie Hoxie, Peter Fairman
Runtime: 1 hour and 31 minutes
Source: Production Companies: Meerkat Media, BRIC TV, Art School Athletics in Association with Tinygiant
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