PAST PROJECTS:
Bethlehem Lights
Writer: Michael Ashton
THE CAST
Colonel Chui Mathieu Ngudjolo: Bentley Kalu, IMDB
Sofia: Elizabeth Alabi, Spotlight
Andrew: Stanley J Browne, IMDB, Spotlight
Co-Producer: Kim Ashton, IMDB
In February 2003, the Nationalist and Integration Front (NFI) and the Front for Patriotic Resistance of Ituri (FRPI) carried out an assault on the village of Bogoro, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sofia was forced to watch her family brutally slaughtered and then sold into prostitution. She is haunted and tormented by the past and consumed by her thirst for revenge. Andrew is a village priest who hid to save his life while his village was destroyed. Tortured by feelings of guilt and remorse, Andrew questions his faith and when he and Sofia confront the Colonel in his hotel room armed and intent on killing him he is intent on getting answers.
Mathieu Ngudjolo is a factual character, where Andrew and Sofia are fictions. He was a Congolese army Colonel responsible for supervising and subsequently arrested for crimes against humanity. He commanded brutalised child soldiers and factional tribal elements. The pair accuse him of the murders in Bogoro and Andrew’s village and as he is trapped in the hotel room by Andrew and Sofia all three are forced to confront their past and their personal demons over the course of one night in Kinshasa.
The Beekeeper
Writer: Michael Ashton
Auschwitz, December 1944. Amidst the desperation and inhumanity of the Holocaust, an incredible power struggle develops between Kommandant Richard Baer and one of his prisoners, Menachem Stressler, a German Jew who survives by harvesting honey from the camp’s bee hives for his captors.
With Russian tanks advancing to liberate the camp, Baer is struggling with his Catholic conscience to come to terms with what he and his countrymen have done to millions of his fellow human beings, and with Stressler enduring an equally hard struggle as he realizes he has survived where his family, his friends, and most of his people have not, growing despair pushes both men beyond the limits of what they can take. As both men seek redemption and forgiveness and a return to their humanity they go head to head while all about them the world is collapsing in fire and chaos.
Based on real life events, THE BEEKEEPER is the awesome story of two men, the nature of power and the strength of the human spirit.
THE BEEKEEPER stage play, winner of The Pulse.
THE ARCHBISHOP AND THE ANTICHRIST
Writer: Michael Ashton
THE CAST
Archbishop Tutu: Jeffrey Kissoon
Leah Tutu: Pamela Nomvete
Piet Blomfeld: Oskar Pierce
Winnie Mandela and Lavinia Browne: Donna Croll
F W de Klerk: Peter Cartwright
Co-Producer: Kim Ashton, IMDB
The Archbishop and the Antichrist, the Amnesty Protect the Human and Koestler Gold winning stage play now adapted for the big screen as The Forgiven. A sell out at London's Amnesty Theatre and rave reviews at The Soho, with a stellar cast.