## *A FRIEND OF DOROTHY* (2025)
**Written & Directed by Lee Knight | Short Film | 21 minutes**
The Story
*A quietly beautiful short film about an unlikely friendship between Dorothy (Dame Miriam Margolyes), a sharp, witty, and increasingly frail elderly woman living alone, and JJ (Alistair Nwachukwu), a teenage boy whose errant football lands in her garden. What begins as a brief exchange blossoms into a genuine bond — JJ helps Dorothy around the house, and Dorothy, in turn, nurtures his dream of becoming a theater actor through their shared love of plays and performance.
Direction & Craft
For a debut feature, Lee Knight demonstrates a remarkably assured hand. The film resists the easy sentimentality that a premise like this might invite, instead finding its emotional truth in small, unhurried moments. Knight’s choice to shoot in an intimate, close-up style gives the film a theatrical quality — fitting, given that theater itself is central to the story. The naturalistic lighting and warm colour palette feel like extensions of Dorothy’s home: lived-in, a little faded, but full of warmth.
What’s most impressive is how Knight trusts his material and his cast. There’s no overwrought scoring or manipulative editing to tell the audience how to feel. The film simply watches these two people together, and lets the connection speak for itself.
Performances
Miriam Margolyes is, predictably, a force. Dorothy is outspoken, irreverent, and brilliantly funny, but Margolyes also lets the loneliness show through without ever making it pitiable. Alistair Nwachukwu matches her energy well — his JJ is warm and earnest without becoming a saint-like figure. Stephen Fry appears in a smaller role as the executor of Dorothy’s will, and Oscar Lloyd is effectively unpleasant as Dorothy’s self-interested grandson Scott.
Heart & Meaning
Knight has been open about the personal resonance of the story. Like JJ, he came of age as a closeted young man with theatrical ambitions, and the film’s central act of encouragement — an older person telling a young outsider that their dreams are worth pursuing — mirrors his own experience. That sincerity comes through. The film isn’t really about the plot at all; it’s about what it means to feel seen by someone who has no obligation to see you.
Verdict
*A FRIEND OF DOROTHY* is a small film with a large heart. In just 21 minutes, Lee Knight delivers a moving, humane, and often funny meditation on loneliness, intergenerational connection, and the quiet courage it takes to live authentically. It earned its Oscar nomination. It’s available to stream on **Disney+** in the UK and Europe, and is well worth the time of audiences who appreciate superb movies that can reverberate well after a film has ended.
*****(5) stars rated several film reviewers but this film reviewer rates it off the charts.
the WORD Editor Gregg W. Morris