South African filmmakers Sheetal Magan (“Paraya”) and Sean Drummond (“Five Fingers for Marseilles”) are teaming up on what they’ve dubbed an “African noir” series inspired by the incredible true story of an “X-Files”-style occult crime unit born in the dying days of apartheid. The duo is pitching the 8 x 60′ series this week at the Durban FilmMart.
“Acts of Man” is created by Magan, whose short film “Paraya” premiered at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, and Drummond, who wrote and produced the genre-bending Western “Five Fingers for Marseilles,” which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. The duo will act as writers and showrunners and produce through Magan’s Atman Media shingle and Drummond’s Be Phat Motel Film Co.
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Casey Walker of Toronto-based Cave Painting Pictures, veteran Canadian producer Todd Brown (“The Raid,” “Mandy”) and Naysun Alae-Carew at Blazing Griffin in the U.K. have all come on board the buzzy show.
“Acts of Man” follows two city detectives who are called to investigate a brutal ritualistic killing in the remote mountain town of Hale, where the shaken conservative community is convinced the devil is at work. Forced to partner with a reclusive, disgraced former South African Police Service occult investigator, they find themselves entangled in a town split along social and religious lines.
The deeper they dig, the more the detectives realize that all is not as it first seemed. An air of creeping supernatural dread hangs over the community, and as the case races toward its conclusion, shocking revelations will force both investigators and the town to confront their demons and question whether the unfolding horrors are the work of the devil or acts of man.
The series draws on real testimonies from the South African police force’s Occult Crime Investigation Unit, which was created amid a rise in occult and unexplained phenomena at the tail end of the apartheid era.
“In the ’80s, the social and political change started a wave of ‘satanic panic’ of people assuming in small-town South Africa that Black government represents the devil and danger,” said Magan. That led to many South Africans being accused of — and even prosecuted for — witchcraft.
“It was…a reaction to impending democracy, impending freedom,” added Drummond. “This fear of the devil is actually the fear of loss of control of the country…and [white South Africans] not being the dominant voice in the room anymore.”
Though the inspiration for “Acts of Man” stemmed from the duo’s shared sensibilities — Drummond, said Magan, is similarly “open to the possibility of the unknown” — it’s evolved into an exploration of the fears, guilts, shames and paranoias of a society still coming to terms with itself three decades after South Africa’s first democratic elections brought an end to white minority rule. “It taps into the zeitgeist of things we don’t want to deal with as South Africans,” said Magan.
A psychological crime drama-cum-supernatural thriller, “Acts of Man” will draw on the successful genre formula of shows like “True Detective” and “Top of the Lake” to tell an elevated police procedural that lays bare the fractured psyche of modern-day South Africa and unravels questions of faith and superstition. In the process, said Drummond, the show’s creators will “dig into the fabric” of the country to explore the traumas buried just beneath its surface.
“What we like to do is ask questions and pose questions to the audience,” he said. “Through the lens of genre, you’re telling a story about characters that’s gripping and interesting and has layers of depth in there that, if you choose to engage with, you can get a lot out of. You can entertain people while really provoking them to question the country or the world they live in.”
