Visual treatment

SYNOPSIS

In a port city of British Columbia, 12-year-old Teruu Takamura lives with the devastation of losing his father. Even more challenging, Teruu has to navigate his grieving mother, Ana, who has sealed herself off emotionally, refusing to speak about her late husband–and certainly not of his complicated history with Eleanor, a local lamp shop owner and longtime friend.

When Teruu secretly visits Eleanor’s shop, he discovers one of his father’s unfinished lamps. Upon fixing it, Teruu turns it on and the past is illuminated. Teruu discovers that the lamp has the ability to bend time. Brought back to 1942, Teruu meets Kai, a young Japanese-Canadian boy trying to hide from soldiers threatening to detain him in a Japanese internment camp during wartime. As Teruu befriends Kai–and explores their small fishing town together in both the past and present–Teruu vows to protect Kai.

Ana erupts when she learns that Teruu has been visiting Eleanor’s lamp shop. She berates Eleanor and her son Will, shunning their family. As the argument boils over, the truth slips out that Ana’s late husband, Kaisuke, had an affair with Eleanor and that Will is Kaisuke’s son. Betrayed, Will recklessly takes his canoe out into the open ocean as a violent storm rolls in. Despite their fractured past, Ana launches her fishing boat out–determined to save Will–only to get lost in the worsening storm.

With his mother in danger, Teruu turns to the past for help. Teruu and Kai travel to the wartime lighthouse and confront both the literal and emotional darkness surrounding his family’s history. As stormclouds roil in the present and soldiers encroach in the past, the boys climb the lighthouse tower and relight its beacon, which draws the soldiers attention. Without no other choice, Kai surrenders to the soldiers, choosing to save Teruu’s family and lead them to safety. Through this sacrifice, Teruu comes to understand the generational cost of silence and the quiet resilience that allowed his family to endure.

In the aftermath of the storm, Teruu uncovers the truth: Kai is his father as a boy. Ana and Eleanor reconcile their shared grief for the same man. Healing begins not through erasure of the past, but by finally speaking of it.

At sunrise, Teruu finds a final message hidden inside his father’s broken lamp:
“To my little lamp keeper – thank you for showing me my favorite places.”

all Images from the ‘proof of concept’ teaser

DOWNLOADABLE LINKS:

Download the Pitch Bible

Download the Screenplay

Google Drive folder: Teaser | Pitch Bible | Screenplay

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CONTACT/

CARL LIBERMAN: carl@thecharacters.com CARY LIBERMAN: cary@thecharacters.com