South African filmmakers Sheetal Magan (“Paraya”) and Sean Drummond (“Five Fingers for Marseilles”) are teaming up on what they have called an “African noir” series inspired by the incredible true story of an “X-Files ” – style occult crime unit born in the final days of apartheid. The duo are pitching the 8 x 60′ series at the Durban FilmMart this week.
“Acts of Man” is created by Magan, whose short film “Paraya” premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, and Drummond, who wrote and produced the genre-bending western “Five Fingers for Marseilles,” which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. . The duo will serve as writers and showrunners and produce through Magan’s Atman Media Shingle and Drummond’s Be Phat Motel Film Co.
Casey Walker of Toronto-based Cave Painting Pictures, veteran Canadian producer Todd Brown (“The Raid,” “Mandy”) and Naysun Alae-Carew at Britain’s Blazing Griffin have all come aboard the buzzy show.
‘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 shocked conservative community is convinced the devil is at work. Forced to team up with a reclusive, disgraced former occult investigator for the South African Police Service, they become entangled in a city divided along social and religious lines.
The deeper they dig, the more the detectives realize that not everything is as it first seemed. An air of creeping supernatural fear hangs over the community, and as the case draws closer, shocking revelations will force both the investigators and the town to confront their demons and question whether the unfolding horrors are the work of the devil or actions of man.
The series is based on real testimonies from the South African Police Service’s Occult Crime Investigation Unit, which was established amid an increase in occult and unexplained phenomena at the end of the apartheid era.
“In the 1980s, social and political changes caused a wave of ‘satanic panic’, with people in small-town South Africa assuming that the black government represented the devil and danger,” said Magan. This led to many South Africans being accused of – and even prosecuted for – witchcraft.
“It was… a reaction to the impending democracy, the impending freedom,” Drummond added. “This fear of the devil is actually the fear of losing control of the country…and [white South Africans] no longer being the dominant voice in the room.”
While the inspiration for “Acts of Man” came from the duo’s shared sensibilities — Drummond, Magan said, is similarly “open to the possibility of the unknown” — it has evolved into an exploration of the fears, guilt, shame and paranoia of a society. Thirty years after South Africa’s first democratic elections ended white minority rule, the country is still coming to terms with itself. “It taps into the spirit of the times of things that we as South Africans don’t want to have to deal with,” said Magan.
A psychological crime drama-cum-supernatural thriller, Acts of Man will build on the successful genre formula of shows like ‘True Detective’ and ‘Top of the Lake’ to tell an elevated police procedural that exposes the fractured psyche of the modern age. -day South Africa and unravels questions about faith and superstition. In doing so, Drummond said, the show’s creators will “dig into the fabric of the country” to explore the traumas hidden just beneath the surface.
“What we like to do is ask questions and ask questions of the public,” he said. “Through the lens of genre, you tell a story about characters that is gripping, interesting, and has layers of depth that you can get a lot out of if you choose to engage with it. You can entertain people and at the same time really challenge them to question the country or world they live in.”