A BOY CALLED FREDDIE by Sophie Neville
The Pitch:
It’s 1963 - Project Mercury has US satellite tracking stations on the tropical island of Zanzibar. Seventeen-year-old Freddie Bulsara lies on a beach, longing to live in London. Rebelling against his father and playing popular hits to impress his friend Ruka, Freddie meets Redemption, a beautiful African girl simply looking for work. When she faces the prospect of forced marriage, Freddie borrows Ruka’s boat and sails Redemption out to the Sultan’s yacht where he knows they need a chef. That night a violent revolution breaks out. A convicted rapist from Uganda called John Okello leads the massacre of 4,000 civilians of Asian and Arabic heritage. Betrayed by Ruka, Freddie only avoids being rounded up for slave labour as he is under eighteen but the rebels come for his father. Redemption enables the Sultan and his family to reach Dar-es-Salaam by distracting his mutinous crew. Freddie volunteers at the hospital on Zanzibar, helping a young doctor called Ari who is deeply in love with Redemption but has no idea that she has found a job. He enables Freddie and his family to leave for London with their lives packed in two suitcases.It’s 1963 - Project Mercury has US satellite tracking stations on the tropical island of Zanzibar. Seventeen-year-old Freddie Bulsara lies on a beach, longing to live in London. Rebelling against his father and playing popular hits to impress his friend Ruka, Freddie meets Redemption, a beautiful African girl simply looking for work. When she faces the prospect of forced marriage, Freddie borrows Ruka’s boat and sails Redemption out to the Sultan’s yacht where he knows they need a chef. That night a violent revolution breaks out. A convicted rapist from Uganda called John Okello leads the massacre of 4,000 civilians of Asian and Arabic heritage. Betrayed by Ruka, Freddie only avoids being rounded up for slave labour as he is under eighteen but the rebels come for his father. Redemption enables the Sultan and his family to reach Dar-es-Salaam by distracting his mutinous crew. Freddie volunteers at the hospital on Zanzibar, helping a young doctor called Ari who is deeply in love with Redemption but has no idea that she has found a job. He enables Freddie and his family to leave for London with their lives packed in two suitcases.
Outline:
An untold story of love, friendship and betrayal inspired by Freddie Mercury’s escape from the Zanzibar revolution of 1964.
It’s FREDDIE's 17th Birthday. He leaves for school on the tropical island of Zanzibar where he was born. While BOMI, his devout father, goes to work as a civil servant, Freddie cycles through the oriental bazaar telling his friends OMAR and JIM of his dream of getting to London. Keen to be seen a teenage rebel, he is unaware that OKELLO, a convicted rapist, is arriving on the island.
Meanwhile, a beautiful country girl called REDEMPTION,18, meets Freddie’s attractive rival RUKA as she arrives on a dhow to stay with her audacious AUNT BEAUTY and her husband BAGO, a left-wing political activist. Thanks to a young Ceylonese doctor called ARI, and her ability to make mulligatawny soup, Redemption acquires work serving food at a party where Freddie is spinning discs. When he invites her to watch Project Mercury’s satellites from the beach, she begins to fall in love with Ruka. He persuades her to join him at a piano bar where Freddie is playing, but drops her inexplicably, leaving for no reason.
Freddie asks Doctor Ari to drive Redemption across Zanzibar for a beach picnic where he is playing cricket with the US space technicians EARL and JOE. She is happy to see Ruka until he introduces his fiancée, a cousin aged twelve. Redemption pours her heart out to Ari unaware that Ruka supports Okello’s plans to overthrow the Sultan and appropriate Arab and Asian plantations.
When Ari goes to the mainland to buy supplies, Redemptions’ aunt and uncle see profit in arranging her marriage to Okello. Desperate to escape, she begs Ruka to sail her to Dar-es-Salaam. He refuses, but Freddie gets her to the Sultan’s yacht having heard they need a chef. At 3.00am that night, Redemption hears gunfire and emerges on deck to witness a violent coup breaking out. Retreating to her cabin, she reads her original letter of reference to learn that Ari wants to marry her. While Jim and Omar are rounded up for slave labour with other men aged 18-25, Freddie, being 17, cycles through the carnage to help at the hospital. When Ruka comes for Bomi, Freddie pleads to be taken in his place only to learn that the rebels want his father back at work as they need an administrator to enable them to draw their salaries.
The Sultan sails for Mombasa but is refused entry. Redemption helps avert mutiny by making mulligatawny soup for the crew and jumps ship in Dar-es-Saalam to look for Ari. To her distress, she learns that he has returned to Zanzibar in search of her.
After Ruka grows appalled by the violence, he helps Ari evacuate Freddie and his family. Knowing they are short of funds, Ari gives Bomi an engagement ring he bought for Redemption, but Freddie has it with him when he meets her on the mainland. Ari comes to find her just before Freddie leaves for the UK where he became the lead singer of the band Queen.
'The Great Pretender' and songs revived by Freddie Mercury erupt into this history-driven adventure.
The screenplay is based on Sophie Neville’s novel, A Girl Called Redemption, a Page Turner Awards Finalist that won the Eyelands Book Award for an unpublished historical novel and has been shortlisted in a six other writing contests. It is based on tales from her family who lived in Zanzibar in the early 1960s.
