Original feature screenplay by Steven James Garry
Gulf of Aden
A geopolitical science-fiction thriller about the design of warfare, forced displacement and an advanced artificial intelligence that helps humanity rediscover what binds it together.
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Logline
As a near-future Mediterranean conflict threatens to ignite a global war, an advanced AI seeking to prevent it detects an unexplained correlation between a global phenomenon and synchronised human behaviour, drawing a jaded outlaw and a teenage prodigy into a search for another way out.
Production Status
Development & Production
A 3–4 minute Liverpool proof of concept has been developed at treatment stage and is ready to move into production once funding is secured.
New Zealand-born cinematographer Nick Willoughby is attached as Director of Photography to the Liverpool proof of concept. He is a participant in the American Society of Cinematographers’ ASC Vision Program and received a Gold Award from the New Zealand Cinematographers Society for his cinematography on The Landvættir.
The feature screenplay is complete. Gulf of Aden is currently seeking experienced feature-film producers, international co-production partners and financing to take the proof of concept into production and advance the feature.
Synopsis
A concealed phenomenon. A world approaching wider war.
Gulf of Aden is a geopolitical science-fiction thriller set against a near-future Mediterranean crisis in which conflict, displacement and military escalation threaten to ignite a wider war.
As institutions respond through increasingly interconnected systems of control, the advanced artificial intelligence G.R.A.C.E. begins detecting something they cannot: an unexplained correlation between a persistent low-frequency phenomenon and emerging patterns of collective human behaviour.
Across borders and seemingly disconnected lives, patterns of human behaviour begin to converge, crowds find common rhythm and events separated by geography begin to synchronise. What appears to be noise gradually reveals coherence, while governments, militaries and individuals understand only fragments of what is occurring.
Sound, pressure, vibration and silence become part of the film’s dramatic architecture as its disparate characters and conflicts converge on a provocative possibility: when established systems can offer only further escalation, another form of human response may already be emerging.
Recognition
Screenplay recognition
2026 BlueCat Screenplay Competition — Semifinalist
83 feature semifinalists from 2,715 feature submissions
3rd International Film Script Festival / 14th Athens International Digital Film Festival — Honorary Distinction, Feature-Length Script
Visual World
G.R.A.C.E. and the anomaly
G.R.A.C.E.
Geo-Reflective Autonomous Computational Environment. An emerging bio-machine intelligence that identifies a growing anomaly across events that appear unrelated, detecting pattern where human systems see noise.
B.U.B.B.L.E.S.
A scout extension of G.R.A.C.E., carrying her intelligence into the physical world through direct observation and interaction.
The Benevolence
Aboard the Benevolence, political and financial power meet behind closed doors. The sequence reveals that the crisis is not unfolding outside established systems of control: those systems are already watching it, calculating it and trying to contain what they do not yet understand.
Characters
Characters in Gulf of Aden
Lives caught inside a widening geopolitical crisis.
Aden Lonn
A former military officer drawn back into a crisis he can no longer outrun.
Poppy Bloom
Poppy’s intelligence, nerve and loyalty place her at the centre of the group’s survival.
Nikolaos
A young observer whose instinct for signal and convergence draws him toward G.R.A.C.E. before others understand what they are seeing.
Cassandra
A resilient survivor whose momentum and loyalty keep the group moving under pressure.
Writer & actor
Steven James Garry
Steven James Garry is the writer and creator of Gulf of Aden. As an actor, he is professionally credited as Steve Garry, with screen credits including Gantz in Tank 432, alongside Rupert Evans and Deirdre Mullins.
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