A Friend of Dorothy
2025 British short film
A Friend of Dorothy is a 2025 British short comedy drama film written and directed by Lee Knight. The film starring Miriam Margolyes as a lonely widow and Alistair Nwachukwu as a teenage neighbour, depicts an unlikely, poignant bond over shared loneliness.
It had its premiere in Shorts films at the Raindance Film Festival on 25 June 2025.
It was nominated for the Best Live Action Short Film at the 98th Academy Awards.
Summary
Dorothy, an 87-year-old widow whose health is declining but whose mind remains sharp, lives a quiet and solitary life; her son has moved to the other side of the world and rarely contacts her, and her grandson Scott is distant and patronizing. Her routine is unexpectedly disrupted when 17‑year‑old JJ sends a football into her garden. Dorothy permits him to retrieve the ball on the condition that he help her open a can of her prunes.
While waiting for her to locate her keys, JJ becomes curious in her library of plays, and their ensuing conversation reveals that JJ is interested in becoming an actor, and Dorothy and her late husband had financially supported local theaters and prospective drama students. After JJ moves her with a reading from The Inheritance, Dorothy proposes that he come over daily to assist her and practice his acting, and the two gradually form a meaningful friendship.
After Dorothy passes away, JJ is summoned to the reading of her will, where it is revealed that Dorothy left him her entire collection of plays.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “A Friend of Dorothy” is 2025 British short film. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Friend, Dorothy and British, not as a finished interpretation.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q137473406. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2025.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Friend of Dorothy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.