THE AXE FORGETS
John Christopher
2025
19 min
Ireland
English
Inspired by a true a story.
In 1888 James S. Jameson, heir to the Jameson Whiskey dynasty, returns to Ireland after a year long expedition to the Congo. Things start to unravel as he attempts a return to normality. Will he choose to face the truth? Or will he choose the axe once more?
John Christopher is a filmmaker born and raised in County Wicklow, Ireland. Raised by a single mother as the youngest of six children, Christopher’s work is shaped by an early understanding of survival, silence, and the power dynamics that define human relationships. Fascinated with the ability for cinema to bring individuals together and the responbility that comes with that as a story teller.
His latest film, The Axe Forgets, is a historical horror rooted in the true colonial atrocities of the 19th century. It examines the story of James Sligo Jameson and the disturbing legacy of imperial violence in the Congo. Drawn to stories where morality is murky and complicity festers in the shadows, Christopher uses this film to interrogate inherited privilege, power, and historical amnesia.
Blending atmospheric horror with rigorous historical research, The Axe Forgets is an extension of his personal and artistic mission: to confront the stories we’re told, and the ones we choose to forget.
The Axe Forgets plunges into the fractured mind of James, a man torn between his genteel Irish life and the unspeakable atrocities he witnessed, and perhaps orchestrated in the Congo. Through his feverish journal entries, we relive the horrors of colonialism: a jungle clearing, a lone tree, and a child’s ritual sacrifice that blurs the line between observer and perpetrator. As James’ guilt consumes him, he battles to destroy the evidence of his complicity, his meticulously illustrated journal entries, while his sanity crumbles. Is redemption possible, or will he wield the axe once more to erase his past?
This is not just a historical reckoning, it’s a searing exploration of moral decay, privilege, and the ghosts of empire that haunt us still to this day.
The Axe Forgets is not just a period piece, it’s a stark reflection of how the colonial mindset persists in modern systems of power. James’ moral collapse, his complicity in violence masked by scientific curiosity and entitlement mirrors the hypocrisy of empires that still exploit human lives and land under the guise of “progress”.
As an Irish filmmaker, I’ve been grappling with the uncomfortable truth of our own history. Ireland often prefers to remember itself only as the oppressed, a nation brutalized by empire. But we rarely confront the fact that we were also active and willing participants in British colonialism, not just victims, but agents of empire, too. The Axe Forgets seeks to shine a light at that national blind spot.
James documented horrors but did nothing. Today, we scroll past headlines about colonial wars, detention camps and genocides numbed by privilege and distance.
James’ journals are a metaphor for our own willful ignorance. The Axe Forgets asks: Who gets to write history? Who is erased? And what happens when we refuse to look?
John Christopher
