In production · a serious historical drama
ZONG
They counted cargo. History remembers people.
In the autumn of 1781, more than one hundred and thirty enslaved Africans were murdered aboard an English slave ship called the Zong, thrown into the sea by its crew and later claimed as jettisoned cargo on an insurance writ. Sixteen months later, in London, an anonymous letter in The Morning Chronicle refused to let the killings be forgotten.
This film tells that story through three lives — the African protagonist on the ship, the ordinary English sailor on the deck, and the formerly-enslaved African in London who wrote the letter. It is a serious historical drama made with AI assistance and historical care.
Three lives
The massacre at sea, the deck above it, and the letter in London.
On the ship
A young African, taken months earlier from his home region. Below decks he counts, remembers, and keeps someone else's name alive. The dignity the ship is designed to strip from him is what the film is built around.
On the deck
An ordinary English sailor, two or three voyages into this work. He is not the man deciding the massacre. He is the man next to it. The film holds him in that specific moral weight — not a monster, not a hero.
In London
Olaudah Equiano, a formerly-enslaved African in London in March 1783, hearing the account through maritime and diasporic networks. The anonymous letter in the Morning Chronicle is his. Granville Sharp, who takes the case into the courts, enters as a crucial supporting character.
The frame
What this film refuses to do.
The enslaved African is the emotional centre of the film. He is not a device for a European character's moral arc. Arrival in Jamaica is not freedom — the people who survived the crossing were offloaded into chattel slavery that did not end for decades.
The Zong did not end British slavery. Abolition came in stages — in 1807 and 1833 — and the Zong case contributed to a mobilisation that was already underway. The film will not narrate the massacre as a turning point it was not.
The names of the people killed on the Zong were not recorded. The court tracked them only as a count. The absence of those names is itself a thematic hinge of the film and is treated as such in the dramatization statement.
Where we are
The record forming in public — before the film is finished.
Writing, research and visual direction are in progress. There is no trailer yet. There are no stills we are prepared to publish. This website exists to make the project visible as it is being made — to explain the frame, cite the record, and open the production notes to anyone who finds the story.
Dramatization statement
A film built from the historical record.
The African protagonist is a named composite. The crew member is a composite. Olaudah Equiano and Granville Sharp are real people, portrayed within the written record. Specific scenes and dialogue are invented and labelled as such. The film is made with AI assistance in a documented workflow.
Pledge
Five percent of revenue to the Breakfast Club of Canada.
Every purchase of the film contributes to the Breakfast Club of Canada, which serves nutritious breakfasts to children across the country.