For a science-fiction thriller, 40 Acres feels remarkably authentic

40 Acres is the highly anticipated feature film debut from Canadian director R.T. Thorne, whose previous work includes projects like The Porter.

Now in theatres, 40 Acres follows a Black-Indigenous family trying to survive in a famine-decimated near future — and protect their farmland against new threats trying to take it. The film has been praised for its performances, and its creative interpretation of Canadian history.

Today on Commotion, culture critic El Jones and film critic Jesse Wente join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss the film's Black-Indigenous themes, and what its release could mean for BIPOC Canadian filmmaking moving forward.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: I would have liked to say that as a post-apocalyptic movie, things start to go wrong when the teenage son starts to sneak out to be a teenager. But really, things start to go wrong from the very beginning. We're introduced to the stakes in that opening sequence of they are beset by forces trying to take their land. 

El, I want to talk about the fact that it's not just set in a dystopian Canadian future. 40 Acres is trying to also do some reminding of history that I think is really difficult to do, right? So the Freeman family here, their roots in this farmland go back to the 1850s, and specifically to the story of an African American ancestor who fled slavery to come to Canada, escaping from a Georgia slave plantation. Briefly, what do you think people should know about the real history of African American migration to Canada before they watch a movie like this one?

El: Well, I'm speaking to you from Halifax/Kjipuktuk, Nova Scotia, which of course African Nova Scotians have been here for over 400 years — the first Black settlement and contact in Canada. So of course many people still don't realize the depth of Black contribution and land in this country. Similarly in Alberta, which I think this very closely references, we had many farmers coming up from the U.S. in the same time period; places like Amber Valley have been settled by African American farmers. And then of course in Ontario, people are probably familiar with the Underground Railroad, and those kinds of settlements … that you still see are very close to the States — this history of liberated Black people attempting to find safety in Canada, but then also being met with white supremacy and violence.

So I think part of the film is this meditation on, you know, Canada's supposed to be this safe place for Black people, the end of the Underground Railroad. But we know that when Black people came here, as in Nova Scotia, there were race riots against Black people. We have suffered from white supremacist violence, and we've integrated with Indigenous communities as well. So it really does pick up that history, and encourage us to think about what it really means.

Elamin: Jesse, the story centres on a blended Black and Indigenous family. How did you feel about the ways that these histories and these two racialized identities, with entirely different relationships to the land, to colonialism — how do you feel like their relationship intersected as one family in this movie?

Jesse: Oh, I thought it was really quite beautifully portrayed. It feels like a film that was made for us, by us, in the most generous way. And that's because it's in the subtle things — it's in the use of language, the foods they eat, which I thought was a really fantastic depiction there…. Our histories as peoples are very much intertwined on these lands, both in terms of our experience of colonialism and our continued survival in the face of it, how we resist and what that looks like. And also, our ability to form communities with one another through that shared experience, that I think is in this movie.

It's so interesting, Elamin, when you talked about that when the son goes out, things go wrong. In some ways, things start to go right when the son goes out because what happens is they broaden … a sort of insular vision that's really the result of colonial pressures and violence, that has made people like, "We're here, and we're not gonna trust the outside." And yet one of the things we see over the course of the film, through the mother's character and her transformation, is that the son wants to have a bigger community. At the heart of this film (and at heart of a lot of post-apocalyptic films), the apocalypse they're imagining is the end of colonialism and capitalism, these systems. That community is the thing that we will need to both survive this current moment, but also what will allow us to build in the future…. So I loved it in terms of the way they communicated. It all felt so real and lived in, in the best possible way. I thought they nailed that part of the story.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.