I adapted this screenplay from a novel by Cara Hoffman. Unfortunately, I don’t think the rights to the novel will be available since, as of 2024, she has optioned them to an independent Greek production company for a limited series. I hope that will be made, since I love the story, but I’m still very proud of this screenplay.

Athens, Greece, 1989. Bridey Sullivan, 17, white, from Washington State, meets Jasper Lethe, 20, white, incredibly handsome, from London, on a train headed into Athens, and, sensing a kindred spirit, she asks him how she can make money, quickly. He brings her back to the seedy hotel where he lives, Hotel Olympos, and introduces her to Milo, Black, his boyfriend.

The three of them fall into a rhythm where they “run” trains—passing out fliers for the Hotel Olympos to tourists on the train. When they bring the guests back to the hotel manager, Sterious, 50s, Greek, they receive a small commission, which they spend on cheap alcohol. Declan Joyce, early 50s, a paranoid, volatile IRA fugitive, acts as a kind of manager of the trio as they run trains, though they wish he would leave them alone. They pass their time in this way, and in reading classic literature and poetry, and in sleeping with each other, until Jasper, who is always looking for more, has an idea to make money quickly: they should sell their passports to Boulos, 20s, white, Eastern European.

Milo and Bridey save the money they make, while Jasper fritters it away on flea market finds. After this first rush of money, Jasper thinks they should steal passports from the front desk of the Hotel Olympos. Bridey says that if there is a safe, she could blow it up. She makes a small bomb and ends up blowing a hole in the wall of the hotel. Jasper uses this diversion to steal eight passports from the front desk, including that of Murat, a Danish-Egyptian young man staying at the hotel—there was no safe.

They sell some of the passports to Boulos. A few weeks later, someone using Murat’s passport blows himself up at the airport in Athens in an act of terrorism, killing seven other people. Jasper thinks that now is the time to lie low, while Bridey and Milo want to leave Athens. Declan’s paranoia level shoots up—he thinks the police are in town to search for him, even though he wasn’t involved in the bombing, or even aware of the passport theft.

After sleeping with Milo one last time, Bridey leaves Athens for a few months, and when she returns, she is a few months pregnant. She finds Milo is gone, and Jasper is dead. No one will give her a clear answer on what exactly happened, though Declan, still menacing, gives her a clipping from The Guardian with Jasper’s utterly fictional obituary. He says she should leave it alone, that everyone got what they deserved. Bridey finds a postcard that Milo left her, and follows the information on it out to the Greek islands.

She reunites with Milo on a small island—he has found a house-sit there. She and Milo spend a few months together, Bridey getting bigger as Milo makes tentative plans to return to England. Milo also believes that Bridey’s baby is his. Bridey discovers three more passports that they didn’t sell, along with some of Murat’s journals.

Bridey returns to Athens, alone, for the third time, not telling Milo she is leaving, taking the passports and journals with her. She robs a woman of her of her passport and identification. Then, she sneaks into Declan’s room at the hotel he’s been working for, the Athens Inn, and plants the new stolen passport as well as two of the others from the Hotel Olympos, and Murat’s journals. She pins the passport theft on Declan as retribution for what he likely did to Jasper.

She sells the last passport to Boulos, and lies to him that she got it from Declan.

Milo, climbing the stairs to his house in the islands, reads in the paper that Murat has been released from prison, that the real criminal was an IRA fugitive named Declan Joyce, who’s been extradited back to Ireland.

Flash-forward thirty years to NYC. Milo stands in front of a bookstore window decorated for National Poetry Month. His book of poems, “Running,” is prominently displayed. A woman comes up behind him and he turns, hope in face, thinking maybe, finally, it’s Bridey. But it’s not Bridey, and it never will be.