Coffee & Water

London, spring 2020. Isabelle has just been furloughed from her job, and her girlfriend has walked out, leaving her alone in an apartment that suddenly feels far too large. As the city shuts down around her, panic gives way to routine: coffee, then water, always in that order, a walk in the park, a call to her mother. Into that carefully managed solitude walks another woman, and a lockdown love story begins to take shape. Written and directed by Catherine Dauphin, who also plays the lead alongside Cecile Sinclair and Mahlon Asante, this thirteen-minute short was filmed in a partly locked-down London and produced with support from Luxembourg's Film Fund and the FILMREAKTER Quickies initiative. Gently comic and quietly observant, it captures the strange intimacy of a moment when meeting someone new meant breaking every rule.