Sallitt funded the micro-budget film using his income as a technical writer for the New York City Office of Technology and Innovation, and shot it in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn using sixteen days of accrued vacation time.

It received a one-week theatrical run at Anthology Film Archives in New York City on March 1, 2013, and was released on DVD and digital media by Cinema Guild on August 20, 2013.

Despite keeping up contact via video letters and a host of electronic media, she takes the separation hard, and her concerned mother sends her to psychotherapy.

[4] Neil Young reviewing the film for The Hollywood Reporter writes "Sensitive subject-matter is handled with tact and intelligence in this tart if talky US indie.

"[5] According to Dennis Schwartz, "An American indie with European sensibilities, it makes for a different sort of coming of age film – a highbrow and distinctive one that's worth checking out.

"[2] Nicolas Rapold of The New York Times wrote, "More often than not the emotional bind is not shocking or taboo at its root, and indeed Mr. Sallitt’s latest, the Brooklyn-set feature The Unspeakable Act, is about the familiar more than it is about the forbidden.

"[6] Similarly, Drew Hunt of the Chicago Reader warns, "This may bore or frustrate some viewers: the appeal of an incest story is the prospect of seeing repressed, taboo desires erupt into explicit sex and ensuing scandal.

[9] Dan Sallitt, the director and screenwriter of the film himself, said in an interview with Filmmaker, "I personally don’t see Jackie’s incestuous desire as a transitory thing or part of her passage to adulthood.