South African filmmakers Sheetal Magan (Paraya) and Shaun Drummond (Five Fingers for Marseilles) are teaming up on what they call a “Black African Films” series inspired by the incredible true story of an X-Files-style crime unit born in the final days of apartheid. The duo is screening the 8×60-foot series at Durban FilmMart this week.
“Acts of Man” was created by Magan, whose short film “Paraya” premiered at Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, and Drummond, who wrote and produced the genre-blending “Five Fingers for Marseilles,” which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. The duo will serve as writers and producers through Magan’s Atman Media and Drummond’s Be Phat Motel Film Co.
Joining the exciting cast are Casey Walker of Toronto-based Cave Painting Pictures, veteran Canadian producer Todd Brown (“The Raid,” “Mandy”) and Nason Alai-Caro of the UK’s Blazing Griffin.
Acts of Man follows two city detectives who are called to investigate a brutal ritual murder in the remote mountain town of Hale, where the troubled conservative community believes the devil is behind it. Forced to partner with a disgraced former South African police witchcraft investigator, they find themselves drawn into a town divided along social and religious lines.
The deeper the detectives dig, the more they realize that all is not as it seems at first. A supernatural atmosphere of terror descends upon the community, and as the case nears its conclusion, shocking discoveries will force the detectives and the city to confront their own demons and question whether the horrors unfolding are the work of the devil or man.
The series is based on true testimonies from the South African Police's Mystery Investigation Unit, which was created amid a rise in mysterious and unexplainable phenomena at the end of the apartheid era.
“In the 1980s, social and political change sparked a wave of ‘satanic panic’ among people in small townships in South Africa who assumed that the black government represented the devil and a threat,” says Magan. This led to many South Africans being accused of witchcraft—and even prosecuted for it.
“It was a reaction to impending democracy and impending freedom,” Drummond added. “This fear of the devil is really a fear of losing control of the country… [white South Africans] “He is no longer the dominant voice in the room.”
Although the inspiration for “Human Acts” came from the pair’s shared sensibilities—Magan says Drummond is “open to the possibilities of the unknown”—it has evolved into an exploration of the fears, guilt, shame and madness of a society still coming to terms with itself three decades after South Africa’s first democratic elections ended white-minority rule. “It taps into the zeitgeist of things we as South Africans don’t want to deal with,” says Magan.
“Acts of Man” is a psychological crime drama with a supernatural twist, and will draw on the successful genre formula of shows like True Detective and Top of the Lake to tell a sophisticated police procedural that exposes the fractured psyche of modern South Africa and exposes questions of faith and superstition. In the process, Drummond said, the show’s creators will “dig deep into the fabric” of the country to explore the traumas buried beneath its surface.
“What we love to do is ask the audience questions,” he said. “Through the lens of genre, you’re telling a story about characters that are engaging and interesting and have layers of depth, and if you choose to engage with them, you can get a lot out of them. You can entertain people while really provoking them to question the country or the world they live in.”
