Shades, The

Logline

When the daughter of a botanist, on sabbatical on a newly acquired farm in the Kwa-Zulu Natal midlands, starts talking to the restless spirit of a murdered man, the botanist has to choose between the rational and the spiritual in a battle to save their lives.

Synopsis

London, 2009. Doctor Grace Gray, a beautiful 30-something Kirlian Photography expert, concludes her tenure at a London University and packs up the remainder of her Camden apartment. She is embarking on a year-long sabbatical to her native South Africa, having purchased a run-down farmhouse in the misty hills of Zululand where she grew up, with the intention of restoring the homestead to its former glory. Accompanying her is Angie, her troubled 7-year old daughter, whom Grace hopes will benefit from the bucolic environment and find respite from her mental distress.

Although strange dreams plague Grace's first night on the farm, a beautiful morning breaks over rural Natal and brings with it Henry Mabuza, her childhood friend and newly appointed foreman. Angie immediately gravitates towards Henry, who tells her stories of Africa and the Ancestors, while teaching her how to tend the soil.

When the farmhands arrive, they welcome the newcomers with traditional Zulu song and dance, before work begins on the renovations. But no sooner have the machines begun digging up the ground, when strange things begin to happen: Angie starts talking to an invisible friend she calls Jabu, who “tells her things” and Grace is tormented with recurring, violent nightmares. She finds herself drawn to Henry – a rationalist like herself. Angie's reticence increases daily, and Grace feels powerless to help her daughter.

In a nearby village, ex-apartheid policemen Dreyer and Basson converge in secret, anxious to prevent the farm's new residents from uncovering evidence long-buried there. The farm was once the headquarters of their covert operation, and the men are under severe threat of exposure for their apartheid crimes. In response, they forment a 'clean-up' operation, a plan that includes the human inhabitants of the property.

Grace, worried about Angie's safety on the farm, hires a fumigator to get rid of the swarm of wasps that has taken up residence in the skinning shed - against the advice of the farmhands who believe the insects are messengers of death, and therefore sacred. The bug-man is stung to death, and Zeblon, a farmhand, goes missing.

The remaining workers are convinced the property is possessed by “iDimoni” - a Zulu term describing an ancestral spirit-demon seeking vengeance. When Angie goes missing and turns up in the skinning shed – which is padlocked from the outside – she is found conversing with Jabu in an ancient Zulu dialect. Fearing for their lives, the farmhands plead with Grace to perform a cleansing ritual, but she dismisses their appeals as foolish superstition.

But her normally rational disposition is beginning to erode, and so she begins to investigate the farm's dark and violent history. She discovers the property is situated on ancient Zulu burial grounds, and was once used as a clandestine location- during the apartheid-era 1980's - to torture and murder political detainees.

When she finds a photograph of Dreyer and Basson, proudly exhibiting the sadistically-murdered Jabu, which is almost an exact replica of one of Angie's macabre drawings, her worst fears are confirmed and she is forced to forego her agnostic beliefs in favour of a mystical explanation to the forces at work on her farm.

Meanwhile, in a nearby settlement, a group of Sangomas (Zulu traditional healers) congregate to begin a cleansing ritual. The Ancestors must be laid to rest, and their angry spirits avenged. As the ritual escalates, Jabu's strength increases, and his spirit finally forces its way into the human realm. Dreyer descends on the farm, intending to get rid of the evidence and the witnesses, and Grace finds herself in a life-or-death battle to save herself and her daughter.

Sales Information

Contact: RED PILL PRODUCTIONS
Producers: Natalie Stange
Cell Number: +27 72 737 7776
Fax: +27 86 613 0139
Email: stange.natalie@gmail.com
Postal address : Postnet Suite 253, Melville, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2109
Physical address : 61 Third Avenue, Melville, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2092

Finance Information

Total budget €: 5,000,000.00
Financing in place €:2,700,000

% of total budget in place: 54%

Financiers/Partners already attached to the project:
National Film & Video Foundation, South Africa -100,000 EUR
Department of Trade & Industry, South Africa -1,500,000 EUR
Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa - 1,000,000 EUR
Local Distributor, Ster Kinekor - 100,000 EUR
TOTAL FUNDING IN PLACE - 2,700,000 EUR