Director's Statement
The premise for Coffee was as challenging as it was general: our instructor, Crystal Griffith, told us “make the best movie you can.” I knew one thing I didn’t want was to exert myself in an attempt to make a film look "big." True to the story, I tried to make Coffee small, taking the steeper path of honesty and minimalism, in hope to achieve what I believe every good movie should: make you feel and think.
I don’t like movies that spoon-feed you. Coffee steps into the twilight zone of ambivalence because reality is a gradient of grays, with more open questions than we’ll ever be able to answer. The movie’s premise was to peek into a situation rarely seen in movies, in part because it is so internal. Grief is a social construct – funeral, wake, Shivah – but at the end of the day, you’re alone with your thoughts. How do we take the first step to move on with our lives?
Coffee's characters, and the interactions or dis-interactions between them, tell us about honesty, social habits and norms, growing up, and parent-child roles. What do we think, feel, and say – and what are the conscious and unconscious interactions between these different layers?