Feature Film Screenplay (complete) & Novel (pending)

1960: in the beautiful Cypriot port of Kyrenia, a young British family embraces the start of an exciting adventure. The Travis’s are among the first wave of a new generation of ex-pats to settle there in order to help with the country’s new infrastructure as it moves towards independence. Their lives however, are suddenly derailed onto a new path when Gordon Travis, 31 year-old husband of Susan and father of 5 year-old Gary, is assassinated in front of his wife and child.

Thirty years later in the Middle East, Gary, now a hospital laboratory scientist, finds himself caught up in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, whilst working in a hospital in the emir. Initially, his time spent evading the security forces is tense; claustrophobic; and full of ingenuity: although he is eventually captured. Along with a disparate group of international hostages, he becomes one of Saddam Hussein’s ‘Human Shields’ and is taken to the Southern Iraqi town of Basra, where he involuntarily helps protect a power station from U.N. forces’ air attack. With him are his friend and colleague Todd Kelly, a sporty 25 year-old Australian, whose outwardly jovial nature hides a confused and troubled soul; and 15 year-old Omar, the son of Gary’s Kuwaiti neighbour Achim, who was murdered by the Iraqis during the invasion. Omar believes that his mother is also dead and turns to Gary for support and protection. 

In Scotland, Gary’s mother, Susan, is pursued by newspaper journalist Mark Robertson, who is intrigued by the story of Gary’s capture and suspects that more is hidden beneath Susan’s frosty, seemingly unemotional, surface. Both Gary and Susan are still traumatised by the murder of Gordon and their relationship has been distant ever since. Gary has frequent dreams recounting the shooting of his father, but struggles to visualise the face of the killer. As Susan’s anguish towards her son’s now fragile existence grows, she begins to open up to the journalist, eventually confessing that she has internalised her own grief and that her relationship with Gary has suffered as a result. 

In Basra, after Gary hears a BBC World Service radio message from his mother, he too begins dwelling on the events in Cyprus that have had such a lasting effect on his life. Throughout the hostage situation, there are tales of daring adventure, pain, anguish, depravity, tragedy and even humour, borne out of the internment. Through a series of flashbacks, catalysed by the situation Gary finds himself in, he slowly remembers more and more about Gordon’s murder. With his father in mind, Gary also realises that his lifelong fascination with photography stems from the visual art’s ability to preserve detailed memories the human brain cannot. In the internment camp, he finds comfort in Welsh girl Julie, but this causes anguish for Todd, who hasn’t coped well with imprisonment and whose normally extrovert personality spirals into despair: especially as he struggles to requite his feelings towards Gary. Todd’s ultimate action makes Gary face up to the fears of his own past – his personal ‘Shadows Before Dawn’.

When the hostages are eventually released, Gary is evacuated to the nearest British airbase - in Cyprus - where he takes time out to put together his three-decade-old mystery in order to find Gordon’s killer. For the first time since her husband’s murder, Susan flies out to Cyprus, accompanied by the journalist; and she and Gary are reunited at Gordon’s grave, where they begin to reconstruct their dysfunctional relationship. After some local investigation and utilizing newly-formed embassy contacts, Gary identifies the assassin who is elderly and frail but still very much alive and living in the community. Brimming with pent-up rage, Gary confronts him and makes a decision that will take his own life on yet another new path. 

THIS STORY AND CHARACTERS ARE INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS