Struggling 16-year-old Dean runs a backyard cook shop to support his sick mother. Amidst adolescence's trials at Haile Selassie High School, located in Kingston’s rough Payneland, he battles bullies, including the gnarly school bully, and harbours an unrequited love for his neighbour, Erica. 

When their English class dives into Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet" over a weekend assignment, Dean envisions himself as Romeo, with Erica as his rebel Juliet, sparking newfound courage.

While studying photography, acting, and film theory in London, he began his film career in Italy, working on TV commercials and international movie pre-sales. He later returned to the UK, studying English literature while consulting for 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, and Warner Bros. , He went on to write the story for The Full Monty and co-produced the film, whose success opened doors across the industry.

 He returned to Jamaica in the early noughties, founding Firefly Films to produce several short films for emerging local filmmakers while co-founding the Flashpoint Film Festival and producing the award-winning Better Mus’ Come (2010). In 2019, he created Conquering Shakespeare, a reality TV series following Jamaican high schools staging Shakespeare plays. This project inspired his directorial debut, Romeo & Juliet 4EVA, reimagining Shakespeare through the lens of Jamaican youth

Playing Lord Capulet in Romeo n Juliet 4EVA, award-winning actor, writer and music artiste, Sheldon Shepherd is best known for his role in Better Mus' Come, for which he won Best Actor at the American Black Film Festival in 2012. More recently, he also starred in Idris Elba's directorial debut, Yardie, and the upcoming Bob Marley biopic directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green.

With upwards of 20 years of experience in the creative and cultural arts field, he has been a celebrated performer from a young age.

He also writes and directs for stage, is a published dub poet and a founding member and lead singer of The No-Maddz, a Jamaican art collective and roots reggae dub poetry band.

BETTER MUS' COME, produced and co-written by Paul Bucknor, is an exciting drama unfolding set in 1977/78 at a time when rival Jamaican gangs were enlisted by warring political factions to disrupt the democratic process - and bloodshed was unleashed on the streets. The film draws from the 1978 Green Bay Massacre. Best Feature Awards at both Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival and Bahamas Intl Film Festival, Best Director Award at Pan-African Film Festival and Best Actor Award at American Black Film Festival.