The Haunted Dictator

In the parliament square of a country listlessly crumbling under the immovable yoke of a malign administration, baked in poverty and a relentless tropical sun, a young woman climbs onto the gilded statue of the benighted country's stubbornly immovable dictator to protest. She is immediately arrested and the only reason she isn't shot is due to the intervention of a minister in the dictator's government.

The young woman is Ella, ejected from the beloved country of her birth when her families land was seized. Her saviour is Amina, the mother of her closest childhood friend. Amina's instinctive intervention places her in considerable personal danger though, when guided by filial love she appeals for clemency from the ever paranoid President, an elderly man, isolated from his people in a grand palace and perpetually haunted by the foul mouthed ghost of a former political partner he is widely believed to have had killed.

After Amina appeals to the President for clemency, he takes an interest and meets with her, and from there an increasingly surreal and satirical dialogue develops between Ella, the President and the potty mouthed and remorselessly disparaging spectre that only he can see and hear, which as it touches on power, corruption and inedible cuisine, inexorably destroys all involved.

The author, David Skynner, is a writer and director primarily of film and television and winner of the 2006 Best Drama Bafta for the Children's series 'The Giblet Boys'. He also directed the 1997 ITV film of Wuthering Heights and in addition to his work as an author writes feature scripts.