Overview

The Mosquito Palace is a WWII chamber drama set in a ruined château in Normandy, days after D-Day, June 1944. Five Nazis converge on the chateau lured by the promise of safe passage to Argentina on a bribed U-Boat.  However, they discover there are only two seats. Over the course of one night, the group’s arithmetic of who deserves to survive unravels into betrayal, murder, and a reveal that recasts everything that came before it.

Structured as a contained, dialogue-driven thriller in the tradition of a chamber play, the film is a fictional story inspired by real documented history where every character is built to sit plausibly within the period’s conditions.

Themes & Approach

The script deliberately plays with a historical irony: it’s set in June 1944, a full year before the Nazi ratlines to South America actually existed as an organised network, meaning the escape the characters believe they’re arranging is both premature and, historically, doomed before it starts. Character work is extensively researched and cross-referenced against real historical source material (the ERR, the Hereditary Health Court, the T4 program, Auschwitz’s transport and selection processes and the Feldgendarmerie’s hunt for deserters), with a companion fact-vs-fiction document maintained alongside the script for pitch and marketing use.

Production Info

• Written & Directed by: Mark Esper
• Genre: WWII Drama / Thriller
• Format: Short film (adapted from a feature-length script)
• Current draft: Script Draft 19 (short edit); character bios reconciled against Draft 11 of feature script
• Scripts Registered with US Library of Congress with complete chain of titles