God's Baboons (2005)

This darkly comic DV feature charts a young artist's tightrope walk between creativity and madness. Twenty-five-year-old Alex has been using his growing accomplishments as an actor to hide from his true dream of writing - he yearns to work alone, but fears the associated isolation and responsibility. His doubts are amplified by the fact that his late father - from whom Alex inherited both talent and a genetic disposition towards mental instability - ended his literary career by taking his own life. Encouraged by the mentorship of Michael, a subversive priest, Alex is determined to force a confrontation with his fear. He quits the lead role in a career-launching production of Hamlet, cutting off any financial security in order to push himself into his writing. In doing so, he inadvertently exchanges the portrayal of a character's madness for the reality of his own. Hamlet's drama proceeds to unfold, complete with murder plots, Oedipal promptings, a father's ghost, an irresponsible mother, an imposing stepfather, an alienated girlfriend, and an increasingly inescapable descent into delusion and mayhem - only outside of the imaginary world of the theatre, it is Alex's life that provides the setting...