Charlot

'The world's greatest silent comedian finds his voice in French Indochina.' Indochina, 1936: Charlie Chaplin and his co-star and lover, Paulette Goddard, are on vacation in Asia following the release of the global superstar's silent masterpiece, Modern Times. Evading the press in Phnom Penh, he is inspired to work on a new film idea – imagining his iconic alter ego, the Tramp, in the colonial rubber plantations. But Charlie Chaplin's presence in the French protectorate has encouraged Cambodians to speak out for real against colonial exploitation and the authorities are nervous about his visit. As the middle-aged filmmaker grapples with his creativity and his conscience, a deepening friendship with a Cambodian comic actor and anti-colonial communist eventually forces him to choose between lending his celebrity status to their cause or keeping silent. Fictionalised around real events, Charlot is a story about how an embittered Charlie Chaplin abandons his silent Tramp in order to find his own voice in the politically turbulent 1930s.

Ian Masters is an award-winning screenwriter who has worked across Africa and Asia for over twenty years. As a freelance scriptwriter and creative consultant for BBC Media Action he has developed and written TV and radio dramas from Bangladesh to Indonesia, Cambodia to South Sudan. His first produced feature film script, The Last Reel, was Cambodia’s submission to the Academy Awards in 2014. In 2018 he returned to the UK, where he continues to write and work as an international script consultant from Somerset. Charlot is his first novel.