Debut filmmaker R.T. Thorne’s action thriller 40 Acres is set in a famine-decimated near future where a former soldier (Deadwyler) and her family struggle to safeguard their farm as they make one last stand against a vicious militia hell-bent on taking their land.

In the film, after a plague eradicates all animal life, famine spreads across the globe leaving society at war and in ruins, but the Freemans are surviving — even thriving — on their ancestral farm so long as they dispatch the occasional raiding party. But what good is surviving the end of the world if it means snuffing out your own humanity? Former soldier Hailey (Deadwyler) made that choice years ago, believing that isolation was the only way to protect her family. She and her partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes) fled the collapse along with their children, fenced them off from the world and trained them to fight – and, yes, kill. But now Hailey’s eldest Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor) is a young man, and when he meets a young woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) in the forest beyond the fence, his need for human contact could place the whole family in jeopardy.