After her father’s suicide, a sheltered young girl on the edge of womanhood uncovers the horrifying truth about her overbearing mother and the role their family farm plays in a world where resources are running low and where the residents of her small town are consumed by an insatiable hunger.
Under an always-cloudy prairie sky, fourteen-year-old Tess Fontaine longs to feel the warmth of the sun. But fifteen years of an endless grey brought on by human ignorance has forced the town to accept this new way of life. After her father, Henry, dies by suicide, Tess and her mother, Martha, struggle to keep up with their task of incinerating the community’s leftover cattle under the sexist eye of the head town councilman, BILL, who seizes control of the farm because he’s deemed Martha unfit. As for Tess’s fate, he has plans for her, once she “becomes a woman.”
Tess stumbles upon a woman named Ophelia, who tells her that there’s a safe place beyond the town. In exchange for food, she’ll take her there. Martha reluctantly agrees to leave the farm, seeing no other options to keep Tess safe. After hours of walking, they find it—an old school that’s been burned down. Ophelia loses her last grip of sanity—she tells Martha and Tess that she was trapped inside Bill’s farm for years, that she’s been forced to have children. They hear the rumble of an engine. Ophelia has betrayed them, leading Bill straight to Tess. Tess is captured, while Bill sets Martha on fire. Tess watches as her mother burns alive.
Inside Bill’s farm, Tess learns the horrible truth: her neighbours are being processed like cattle and used to feed the town, and resources are low. Tess confronts Bill in the breeding room where several pregnant women are chained. Bill asks Tess why she wants to destroy what they’ve worked so hard to build. If she kills him, she kills them all. But Tess knows what she has to do. They fight, and Bill gets the upper hand. Just as he’s about to imprison Tess, the chained women emerge, working together to overpower Bill. Tess doesn’t hesitate—she brings her knife down into his head.
Tess and the women escape. Ophelia takes Tess’s hand, an childless mother and an orphaned girl, and together, they watch the farm burn.
It’s then that Tess realizes the truth in Bill’s words—it’s over. Everything is over.
Jessica Landry is a Métis screenwriter, director, producer, and Bram Stoker Award-winning author. Her original horror feature, MY ONLY SUNSHINE, was accepted into Whistler Film Festival’s Screenwriters Lab in 2020 and Blood in the Snow’s Horror Development Lab in 2023.In 2021, she was accepted into the CFC/Netflix Project Development Accelerator; as well as TIFF’s inaugural Series Accelerator program (September 2022) and NSI’s Series Incubator program (November 2021). Her drama/sci-fi feature, ANOMALY, was chosen to participate in Whistler Film
Festival’s Producers Lab (2024) and Women in the Director’s Chair CAM program (2024-25), and her production company, Familiar Films, was chosen for the Canada-France Co-Production
Lab at SeriesMania (2024).
Jessica has several projects in development, including GHOST LANDS, an Indigenous-led paranormal documentary; WE SHALL BE MONSTERS, a factual series about the history of women in horror; an original horror series, ANATOMY OF A SÉANCE; and THE NIGHT BELONGS TO US, a feature adaptation of her Shirley Jackson Award-nominated novella. Her original slasher feature, KILLER BODY COUNT, is currently streaming on Tubi, and she’s written several drama and thriller MOWs including LIST OF A LIFETIME, which was nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award and Hollywood Critics’ Association Award. Jessica also worked as a story editor for the CBC sitcom, STRAYS; co-wrote and co-exec produced the feature doc, TRUE STORY, for the History Channel; has written on FAMILY FIRST, a sitcom in development with Eagle Vision; and wrote and directed several episodes of the factual series, 7TH GEN, for APTN. She’s directed several original shorts, including TESTAMENT (drama; on its festival run) and I FALL TO PIECES (dark comedy; in post). Jessica is currently adapting the novel APRIL RAINTREE as a limited series, recently signed a two-picture development deal, and has other projects in various stages of development.
