If children had a way to understand how they might perceive things from their youth as adults, they might be compelled to make very different choices early in life. Simple misunderstandings can have devastating consequences, but there’s also a tendency to try to shield theoretically innocent minds from harsh truths that require more nuance to comprehend and explain. Tell Me Everything follows a young protagonist whose life is shaped by something he sees as a child but fails to process in a productive way, leaving him constantly yearning for something that just isn’t possible.
Boaz (Yair Mazor) is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. His warm family dynamic is upended when he sees his father (Assi Cohen) with another man, and what he’s seen on the news about the spread of AIDS makes him fear the worst. When he shares this, his father is sent away and disappears from his life. Years later, an older Boaz (Ido Tako) grapples with his internalized homophobia and the resentment he feels towards a man whose absence has been very much felt, and which has forged a strong connection between Boaz and his mother (Keren Tzur), who relies strongly on her son for the support that her ex-husband wasn’t able to offer her.
This is the second feature film directed by Moshe Rosenthal and a significant departure from his first, Karaoke, which starred Lior Ashkenazi, Sasson Gabay, and Rita Shukrun as three people navigating very adult circumstances and looking back at what they have and haven’t done in their lives. This story begins at a point where Boaz isn’t yet old enough to know what he doesn’t know, and consuming too much media has poisoned his mind into thinking that there’s something wrong with his father. The era is one that is far from accepting, demonizing those who are different as problematic and bad rather than employing compassion and understanding.
The title Tell Me Everything is in many ways misleading, since it implies that perhaps Boaz might choose to learn from his father or to save important questions for him about what it means to not be able to be yourself in a given situation. Those questions are instead left to the audience to deduce by watching the conflict in Boaz’s face as he carries the burden of what he’s been through and how growing up without a father – whose departure he instigated by sharing what he saw – has left him longing for something he can’t even clearly remember.
In his sophomore feature, Rosenthal demonstrates a true commitment to character, staying with Boaz as he grows from a child taking in so much of the world around him to a young adult still deciding how much of himself he wants to put back out into it. Mazor, in his first film role, is a promising find, hiding the confusion Boaz has about what he sees with a mask of youthful eagerness and a desire to fit in. Tako takes over the role well from him as the character grows, and both Cohen and Tzur turn in emotional, understated performances that speak to their characters’ complicated journeys.
Tell Me Everything hones in on one very specific experience during a time in which so many had their lives irreversibly changed by the discovery of a hidden life, and it portrays Boaz’s father as someone lovingly committed to his children who isn’t just one thing and pays the price for not being open about it with his family, who, by all indications, wouldn’t have responded any better had he been the one to tell them himself. This film says as much with the words and conversations it doesn’t include, painting a haunting portrait of time lost and affirming relationships missed due to societal norms and an inability to look past perceived flaws to find the humanity under them.
Movie Rating: 7/10
Tell Me Everything premieres in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
