Filmmaker R.T. Thorne's ‘40 Acres' blends dystopian thrills with family drama

San Francisco Chronicle​

a day ago

R.T. Thorne built a career directing music videos and episodic television before making his feature debut with his post-apocalyptic thriller '40 Acres.' Its setting on a farm hearkens back to the filmmaker's own youth in Calgary when he spent time on farms and among the fruits and vegetables of his father's produce-supply business.
But then Thorne's mother moved him and his brother to Toronto. An immigrant from Trinidad, the racism she experienced in her new country made her determined to give her sons the tools they would need to survive in a world that could be so hostile. Those early lessons and his mother's strength form the basis for '40 Acres.'
'Being a first-generation Canadian in a new world, I had my own ideas of freedom and what I wanted,' Thorne recalled during a visit to the Bay Area where '40 Acres' screened at the SFFilm Festival. 'And I was often telling her, 'You know, Mom, maybe it's not as bad as you think it is.' And my mom's like, 'No, it's bad.'' That mother-son relationship became the core of the film, he said.
Danielle Deadwyler stars as Hailey Freeman in Thorne's dystopian tale, the descendant of American slaves who arrived in Canada generations before via the Underground Railroad and established the titular 40-acre farm that is now hers.
In this future world, most animals are extinct, and famine is rampant. But Hailey, her Indigenous partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes), and their blended family thrive, thanks to that rarest of commodities, arable land. A military veteran, Hailey has erected strong security measures and trained the children in self-defense against invaders. The family lives peaceably, but when her teenage son Emanuel (Kataem O'Connor) meets a girl while running an errand outside the farm's perimeter, their interaction leads to a confrontation that threatens the family's closely held birthright.
'It's a universal conflict that happens in almost every family. The previous generation tells the younger generation, 'This is how the world is,' and the younger generation goes, 'Well, maybe it could be something else.''
For Deadwyler, who received a BAFTA nomination for her performance in 'Till' as Mamie Till-Mobley, another protective mother but one who couldn't stop the murder of her son Emmett, what attracted her to Thorne and co-writer Glenn Taylor's script was the family story and its action elements.
'I loved a family busting evil's ass,' she said during a recent interview before growing serious. 'The experience of present-day motherhood, and specifically, Black motherhood has a certain temper to it, with regard to the way violence plays out in Black communities from police and authoritarian figures and the way it's playing out in immigrant communities, those things are constant. When thinking about your children stepping foot outside the door for joy and playfulness or just going to freaking school, there is a hard, pulsing fear.
'You heighten that with Hailey's post-apocalyptic world that has people literally trying to come over the fence to kill your family,' she added. 'You do what you have to do in order to survive.'
'40 Acres' lays out the risks facing Hailey's family from the beginning, with an encounter with marauding strangers. But building a portrait of daily life amid an idyllic setting was just as important to Thorne. He wanted a kind of Eden, a lush landscape far from any road or hint of civilization, and found it in a real farm in northern Ontario.
The location fed into the actors' sense of their characters and their circumstances.
'I drove a tractor!' Deadwyler said. 'You're walking incessantly. You're out amidst the cosmos and the stars. You can see things very clearly and distinctly. It's very different than being in any kind of metropolis. There's a quietude to the experience. There were moose, coyotes and foxes. It just enhances the experience and the understanding of somebody in that world.'
For his part, Thorne described Deadwyler as a generational talent, one that enriches every role she takes. When it came to playing Hailey, she balanced the woman's strength and vulnerability along with the physical presence of someone who spent their life in nature.
'Danielle showed up the first day, and she sat down on a log outside while we were preparing,' Thorne said. 'I turned and I looked at her, and she looked like she'd been there for 23 years and had worked the land. She just embodied that.'
'I've never seen this family like Hailey's onscreen,' he added. 'I've never seen a Black and Indigenous family, even though our communities have a lot of shared history. Both cultures survived colonialism and have had to rely on each other, but we've never seen those stories told. I just wanted to see that family's story and see their survival.'