Little Fish 2020

We see an elderly woman crying in a supermarket because she cannot remember why she came. A former surgeon, now infected, tries to operate but forgets human anatomy mid-surgery. A father fails to recognize his own son. The film’s terror is not in the jump scare, but in the subtle widening of a pupil, the half-second pause before a familiar name, the gentle panic in a lover’s eyes when they struggle to place your face.

Unlike zombie viruses or airborne super-flus, the threat in Little Fish 2020 is psychological. Neuroinflammatory Afasia (or "NIA") is a rapidly spreading disorder that causes progressive memory loss. But it doesn't just make you forget where you put your keys; it rewrites your emotional history. Sufferers forget the faces of their spouses, the sound of their children's laughter, and eventually, their own names.

(Jude) is the heart of the film. She has to play the emotional arc of a woman watching her lover become a stranger. In the third act, when Emma fails to recognize her, Cooke’s face cycles through five stages of grief in ten seconds. It is a performance devoid of vanity; she cries with an open mouth, snot and tears mixing, because that is what real grief looks like.

When the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2020 (just as the real COVID-19 lockdowns began), it felt like a strange coincidence. Watching it now, it feels like a prophecy.