Gardenia Open-Air Cinema | Saturday 4 October 2025
Alongside presenting his Opening Night film Dirty Boy, award-winning writer-director Doug Rao performed a 40-minute excerpt from his one-man play in development, A Veteran of Troy, at Gardenia Open-Air Cinema.
Reimagining the Trojan War through the eyes of a modern soldier, the work combines Homeric myth with contemporary trauma, exploring masculinity, grief, violence and memory. Drawing on figures including Achilles, Odysseus and Agamemnon, Rao reframes their stories through the fractured perspective of a homeless veteran searching for meaning and identity.
Rao, whose feature film Dirty Boy also screened at Cannes, is an actor with credits including the Royal Shakespeare Company, BAFTA-winning The Bill and Netflix drama Zero Chill.