Visit Films Takes World Sales Right for Dystopian Tale ‘40 Acres’ Starring Danielle Deadwyler (EXCLUSIVE)

Visit Films has snapped up world sales rights (excluding Canada) to R.T. Thorne’s feature bow, “40 Acres,” a dystopian survival thriller, which is screening in Toronto’s Special Presentations.

“R.T. is an exciting director who has proved himself in other formats,” said Visit president Ryan Kampe. “Audiences will be taken with his commercial approach to social-issue filmmaking. [The film] epitomizes what we try to do at Visit by merging the two areas.”

Filmed on location in Northern Ontario, “40 Acres” follows soldier-turned-farmer Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler, who also stars in Toronto’s “The Piano Lesson”) and her family as they defend their remote homestead against a militia.

Michael Greyeyes (“Rutherford Falls”) stars as Freeman’s partner, with Toronto’s Kataem O’Connor as the eldest son who desires a different path after meeting a young woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) beyond the fence.

“Expressing ideas about land and food sovereignty in a film featuring Black and Indigenous characters makes sense with their shared traumas of the colonial past,” Thorne said.

Jennifer Holness of Hungry Eyes Media produced, in association with Crave, a division of Bell Media. Mongrel Media distributes in Canada.

Thorne, who started out directing music videos, has built a deep, world-building resume over the past 20 years, most recently as co-creator and multihyphenate on Hulu’s “Utopia Falls” and serving as a director and exec producer on period drama “The Porter.”

“Over the years, I’ve been offered a lot of stereotypical scripts about Black life, as if I’d only be interested in that — but I’m interested in stories told from different perspectives,” said Thorne, who started “bumping around” ideas for “40 Acres” six years ago.

“When the pandemic hit, it showed us that the infrastructure that holds together our society is more fragile than we thought,” he continued. “I thought, ‘How would I protect my family if things go dark?’”

Now based in Toronto, Thorne was born in Calgary, Alberta (a major beef producer) and his father worked in produce. “I grew up understanding the farmers’ relationship with the land as noble and important,” he said. “When you project that into the dystopia genre, a family of farmers in a time of food scarcity has the biggest target on their backs.”

“40 Acres” is supported by Telefilm Canada, NOHFC, Canada Media Fund, Ontario Creates, CBC, Urban Post Production, FELA and Back Home.