screenwriting
Quarterfinalist
Final Draft Big Break Contest 2020
In the arid scrubland of South Darfur, a complex ethnic conflict is unfolding. Millions of people have been displaced and hundreds of thousands have been murdered. The rebel Sudan Liberation Army controls a patchwork of territory, and the Government of Sudan waits for any chance to strike back and shift the balance.
As the fighting continues, a small team from the aid organization Humanity International is trying to get things done. They cross the line of control every day, drilling water points and delivering food aid to people who have been forced from their homes.
“Same as always — the
Government of Sudan pretends to cooperate, and then they do everything they can to f*** us up. That’s the game.”
The Displaced brings to life the hard reality of one of the most difficult professions in the world. Based on the real lived experiences of international aid workers and their national staff colleagues, The Displaced paints an evocative picture of modern humanitarian work, complete with all its contradictions and frustrations. It’s a show that teaches us that we can never really help anyone, but we still have to try.
“If I die tell my wife to use the insurance money to send my eldest boy to school in Nairobi. I don’t want him to end up in Darfur like his father.”
The Displaced is an unproduced one-hour TV drama created by Andrew Zadel. The pilot script beat out more than 8,000 other entries to advance to the quarterfinals of Final Draft’s Big Break contest, one of the largest screenwriting competitions in the world.
For enquiries about obtaining rights to the screenplay, please contact the author at andrewzadel [at] gmail [dot] com