Now streaming on Girls in Film, Type of Rain by Saskia Steinberg follows Millie in the wake of the death of her close friend. Millie finds escape in her late-night baths, but when persistent phone calls trigger a panic attack and her therapist suggests delaying university, her grief and anxiety bubbles. Just when she needs a helping hand, a friend urges her to try something different: a cold bath. Immersed in the icy water, Millie finds unexpected solace and peace amid her darkness.

27 Nov 2025

Saskia Steinberg

When writing Type of Rain, my co-writer and co-producer Maddy and I were set on writing from the perspective of our main character, Millie. She’s the only person we see in the film, and although she interacts with several other characters, everything unfolds solely from her point of view. However, there was another, equally important character we wanted to explore - water. 

The title, Type of Rain, comes from a passage in Katy Wix’s book Delicacy. I came across it when a friend posted a passage of it on her Instagram story: “I read somewhere that we tend to feel all loss at once. I think this means that you can’t feel one loss without feeling every loss you’ve ever had. It’s all one feeling, one loss. Everyone is just a different type of mourner standing in their own type of rain”. This to me was such a perfect portrait of grief, the idea of grief being an individual experience - it isn’t isolated but accumulates, layering over itself.

So how did water become such a central theme? It started when I was studying in Dublin and had found a love for swimming in the sea. I enjoyed the peacefulness, the catharsis and the sense of community it brought. I told my good friend, now producing partner, Maddy about it. She told me she too had done the same, but in LA, where she was studying. (We could debate whether you could call that ‘cold water swimming’ but that’s not the point!)

When we both found ourselves back in London for the first time in six years, we knew we wanted to make a film together, we just weren’t sure what about. I mentioned a script I had written whilst in Dublin, about a schoolgirl mourning the loss of her friend, finding catharsis by submerging herself in the Irish sea. That script became our starting point.

For practical reasons, we reshaped the story. Firstly, instead of a grieving schoolgirl, Millie became someone on the cusp of change, caught in that unsettling limbo between finishing sixth form [the last two years of high school] and figuring out what comes next. Those in-between moments in life, where everything feels so uncertain – whether it's applying for a new job, waiting on an acceptance letter – are deeply human. When loss is added to the mix, that certainty can feel even more challenging. 

Budget also played a role in shaping the film. Rather than shooting by the sea, we narrowed the story to two spaces: Millie’s bedroom and her adjoining bathroom. Instead of submerging herself in the ocean, she gets into a cold bath. While we sometimes joke about this being an intentional choice, it actually hammered home the film’s themes. The enclosed space heightens Millie’s sense of entrapment and the choice to step into cold water by simply flipping a tap, became a small yet profound act of release. 

You see, water can be unpredictable, like grief. It ebbs and flows. By making it a key player in the film, we used it as a vessel for Millie’s emotional state. At the beginning, she sits in a steaming hot bath, her breathing is fast and panicked. By the end, overwhelmed by a panic attack, she returns to the bath. But this time, under her friend’s guidance, she turns the tap from hot to cold, choosing to confront the discomfort rather than be consumed by it. 

Being able to capture the raw, unpredictable nature of water on film was always something we dreamed of. So when we were generously gifted 16mm film, we knew it would be a perfect medium for this story. Film, like water, has a life of its own. It’s textured – real. Just like water, it reveals, reflects and captures all of the imperfections and things we can’t control. 

And that’s just how low-budget film making goes – the last scene of the film was the last shot we took. We quite literally ran out of the film as we called cut…And maybe that’s why it felt right for Type of Rain. Because grief, like water, is unpredictable. And in the end, it’s not about trying to fight or suppress it, but about finding a way to move forward with it.

You can watch Type of Rain below and on Girls in Film.