‘Incredibly ambitious and probably really stupid’: R.T. Thorne’s sci-fi debut ’40 Acres’

By Alex Nino Gheciu R.T. Thorne says he could have played it safe with his debut feature. Instead, he swung for the fences, writing an epic sci-fi thriller about generational trauma, cannibalism and humanity’s connection with land — all set in what he calls “a post-apocalyptic world where the stakes are at the absolute highest.” “For my first film, it was incredibly ambitious and probably really stupid to write something like that,” the Calgary-born writer-director laughs in a recent video call from Toronto. “40 Acres,” out Friday, centres on a Black-Indigenous family in a famine-stricken future where a fungal pandemic has wiped out all animal life on the planet. When a marauding group of cannibals closes in on their farm, ex-military matriarch Hailey Freeman, played by Danielle Deadwyler, clashes with…

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