TRIBECA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025 REVIEW! Adult friendships can be a difficult thing to navigate at times, especially when one person is getting some kind of benefit out of the relationship. The indie dramedy The Travel Companion by filmmakers Travis Wood and Alex Mallis, along with co-writer Weston Auburn, is about a filmmaker who depends on his friend’s airline employee benefits for free flights but starts to get uncomfortable with his friend’s new romantic relationship since it may mean no more free rides.
Simon (Tristan Turner) is making a documentary with footage from around the world, taking full advantage of his friend and roommate Bruce’s (Anthony Oberbeck) travel companion perk. They live in New York City, and the film starts out showing Simon at a festival post-screening Q&A, where the host runs out of time before they get to him.
That scene sets the tone for how the main character’s life is going at this point. Simon is not successful, nor does he have a clear direction with his filmmaking career, so he holds onto his travel perks with dear life as the only thing he’s got going on.
Simon sets up his buddy Bruce with fellow filmmaker Beatrice (Naomi Asa), but then becomes increasingly worried that the relationship will bloom to the point of him being pushed out of his free flights. We see a scene where it feels like Simon is nagging Bruce for help to catch a new flight after he overslept for the original one, but Bruce explains that he’s doing work and Simon is on his own.
Anthony Oberbeck and Tristan Turner in The Travel Companion, navigating the fine line between friendship and dependency.
“…a friendship that has changed in dynamics due to the other person entering a romantic relationship.”
I’ve been in Bruce’s shoes before, as probably many of us have, where a friend starts to grate on you with their need for favors that it starts to feel like you’re being used as opposed to friends who equally help each other out. I tend to think of those as friendships that happen mainly in your younger years, because hopefully,y you learn and grow out of those situations as you get older. The free travel thing isn’t an issue for the two buds until Beatrice enters the picture.
It’s interesting that the perspective of the movie is through Simon, and you can feel his desperation and empathize with him, even though his pleas enter the embarrassing zone. It feels to me like he’s so paranoid because he knows what the right thing to do is, but he can’t step out of his own way, possibly due to his insecurities.
Tristan Turner does an excellent job in The Travel Companion because it would be easy for his character, Simon, to come off as unsympathetic, but we can see from the performance how much the flights and being a filmmaker mean to him. The whole cast makes this world feel authentic, with scenes like the one with Anil Joseph as Jafar, a cab driver/actor who explains the importance of “passive income” to Simon.
I enjoy it when a movie can make you ponder aspects of your own life, and that’s what The Travel Companion does with friendships. Even if you haven’t experienced the favors end of it, we’ve all had a friendship that has changed in dynamics due to the other person entering a romantic relationship. It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as a Yoko Ono/Beatles situation, but things can be awkward, such as when Bruce and Beatrice have a date in the apartment and Simon shows up unexpectedly. Do you let your friend find love, or hold onto that friendship tightly? It’s a fascinating question indeed.
The Travel Companion screened at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.
"…his pleas enter the embarrassing zone."
