This Will Never Work Opens Brooklyn Film Festival World Premiere

Indie film stars comedy talent from VEEP, and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Avenue Q and Girls5Eva.

Los Angeles, CA (October 3, 2025). Indie feature film This Will Never Work is a comedy about the intersection of mental health, family and race. It returns to New York this month for the SoHo International Film Festival. On October 12th followed by the Dumbo Film Festival on November 21st. It premiered as the opener of the Brooklyn Film Festival in 2025. Where it won Outstanding Achievement for Best Screenplay and recently completed its international premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival.

“An absolutely brilliant piece of work; likely one of the best films of the year.” – Montage Review

This Will Never Work is about a Black family coming together to have an intervention for Amanda’s drinking problem. They’ve hired a therapist named Trevor (a white man, not that it matters). And written emotional letters, and now they sit and wait for Amanda to arrive. But when she does, Trevor realizes that the family hasn’t exactly been honest with him. “I think I should leave,” he says. But listening isn’t this family’s strong suit, and they’ve already prepared for battle. The intervention turns into a whodunnit of all the family’s drama and trauma. We flash back and forth from contested family memories to the claustrophobic intervention room. We’ll piece together the mysteries that haunt them.

“One of the most captivating atmospheres that I’ve ever come to witness…. A 5 out of 5.” – Sal Cento, The Movie Nerds

The film’s writer and director are the award-winning comedy duo Marina & Nicco (Marina Tempelsman and Niccolo Aeed). Whose work has been featured by Comedy Central, The New Yorker, Fusion, The New York Television Festival, Audible, The UCB, Wondery, Radiotopia and more.

The Official Trailer for This Will Never Work, Written & Directed by Marina Tempelsman and Niccolo Aeed

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The duo have been collaborating for 18 years, creating gasp-worthy comedies in the form of plays, short films, and audio dramas. This Will Never Work marks their first independent feature film – an increasingly appealing field for artists who are less represented within the Hollywood studio system. They began writing the This Will Never Work script years ago under the (working title Intervention), after their own experiences with interventions in their respective families.

“Hilarious.” – Lucia Juliao, Repodcasting

“We wrote this movie because of our own family experiences with interventions,” says Aeed. “There’s no other time when you’re as aware of the weird, overlapping, conflicting dynamics that make your family messed up. So it’s pretty wild to put one person at the center of it and say, ‘You’re the problem.’ We’re making this movie to make you laugh, then make your heart hurt a little bit, then make you call your mother.”

“A non-stop masterpiece. There was no moment where I wasn’t either: 1) Laughing 2) Tearing Up 3) Enthralled in stillness. Wanting to know what was going to happen or be said next… You must experience this film.” – Angie Hung, Film Dimension

“It’s all about exploring the complexities and contradictions that arise when a family tries to tell a cohesive story about itself,” adds Tempelsman. “Because even if they live under the same roof, no two people are born into the same family.”

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This Will Never Work centers around a Black family that doesn’t believe in therapy trying a last-minute, hail-mary pass at healing through an intervention. The family matriarch Linda (played by Portia – St. Vincent, Synecdoche, New York) hires a white intervention moderator Trevor (Peter Grosz – The Menu, Veep) to address the drinking problem of her daughter Amanda (played by Amandla Jahava – DMZ, Rap Shit, Peep Show). But when Trevor arrives, he quickly realizes he’s been lured under false pretenses.

The film stars an extraordinary cast of comedic talent, assembled by Destiny Lilly (CSA), including: Ron Canada (Wedding Crashers, House of Cards, Madam Secretary),  Marinda Anderson (A League of their Own, Amsterdam), Usama Siddiquee (And Just Like That, Better Things, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert), Sarah Stiles (Avenue Q, Billions), and Jerimiyah Dunbar (S.W.A.T., This Is Us, Dave).

This Will Never Work is an entirely independently-produced film, and was one of the most successful campaigns on the fundraising platform Seed&Spark, where it received a coveted Patrons Circle grant from Mark Duplass.

The teen musical Best Summer Ever features a fully integrated cast and crew of people with and without disabilities. That is produced by Jamie Lee Curtis, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mary Steenburgen, and Ted Danson, and The Wedding Year, starring Sarah Hyland and Anna Camp.

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