40 Acres

The world's food supply has collapsed, farmland is worth more than anything else, and on a farm in rural Canada the Freemans are holding out. They're descended from Black American farmers who settled there in 1875, and they're led by Hailey (Danielle Deadwyler), a former soldier who has turned her husband, Galen (Michael Greyeyes), and their four children into a small fighting unit ready to meet anyone who comes near with a bullet.

That discipline starts to crack with Manny (Kataem O'Connor), the teenage son, who wants to see the world outside and isn't sure he believes everything his mother tells him about it. When he meets Dawn (Milcania Diaz-Rojas), a young woman from a community nearby, the family's rules are put to the test, just as their most dangerous neighbours start circling the farm.

'40 Acres' is the first feature from R.T. Thorne, a Canadian director who came from music videos and television, and who modelled Hailey partly on his own Trinidadian mother. The title points back to the "40 acres and a mule" promised to freed slaves after the American Civil War, a promise that was never kept.

It was shot in autumn 2023 in Sudbury, northern Ontario, for around $8 million. Greyeyes, familiar from 'Fear The Walking Dead', and Deadwyler, the star of 'Till', head a Black and Indigenous family that critics singled out as one of the film's strengths.

It premiered at Toronto in 2024 and went on to sweep the 2026 Canadian Screen Awards with nine wins, among them best direction, best original screenplay and best first feature. Magnolia Pictures released it in US cinemas on 2 July 2025. Reviews were warm, above all for Deadwyler, though a few found the survival template familiar. In the UK it carries a 15 certificate and can be rented or bought on Prime Video and Apple TV.

• Action
• Thriller
• Drama