In what seems like just another late night taxi fare, this particular journey and passenger will ultimately change the course of Rene’s life forever. Sherbet is a two hander about those random encounters that people sometimes need to reach an internal or emotional destination in their lives.

Director’s Vision for ‘Sherbet’

I have always loved the taxi driver/passenger dynamic, a familiar and relatable concept. Anyone who has ridden for a long time in a cab has experienced the unique conversation that can take place between rider and driver. A novelty that won’t be around forever, taxi drivers cling onto their jobs in the face of extinction, one day soon, services will invest solely in self-driven cars, and the unique experience of chatting with your driver will go the way of the dinosaurs, making this film a passionate time capsule of sorts.

 

I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve jumped in a London cab after one too many beers and put the world to rights or shared things with them that I wouldn’t share with my own nearest and dearest, all without a care in the world. There is a certain freedom in it, a beautiful moment in time with a stranger that in all likelihood you’ll never see again. I’ve always treated it like free therapy in a way.

 

There was one particular taxi journey that inspired this story, though. One evening,I was on my way home from screening my debut short Mark’d.

During the usual chit-chat, the cab driver took an interest in it, what it was about, its themes. He asked me where he could watch it. Thinking he was just being polite, I told him just to

search its name online and he’d find it, and when he said he’d watch it, we quickly moved on, expecting nothing to come from it.

 

Fast forward almost a week, with the taxi journey all but a distant memory, I received an email from a name I didn’t recognise. As fate would have it, the cab driver had

tracked me down to tell me he’d watched my short, that he’d recognised the type of abuse on display in the short in his own marriage and that he had no idea he was on the receiving

end of emotional abuse. He thanked me for opening his eyes and told me he’d be making a change. I often wonder if he ever did.

 

We never think about the impact we might have on someone’s life, even if it’s just a fleeting passage of time with a stranger. Just a few words could literally send lives in

different directions. This film is about just that. Two characters, complete opposites, are flung together as fate should have it, and they end up being the exact person each other

needed in this particular moment of their lives.

Are You Awake? is a deeply intimate story following a person who no longer sees the point of it all. With sprinkles of sci-fi and mystery, the film highlights the dread of staleness, the impact of a bad idea, and the role of companionship in a world weary to step outside. Feature script available.