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- Danielle Deadwyler Shares Her Post-Apocalyptic 'Survival' Strategy as Dystopian Thriller "40 Acres" Hits Theaters (Exclusive)</p>
<p>Bailey Richards, Sharareh DruryJuly 2, 2025 at 1:47 AM</p>
<p>Magnolia Pictures</p>
<p>Danielle Deadwyler stars as a soldier and matriarch in new dystopian action-thriller 40 Acres</p>
<p>40 Acres arrives in theaters July 2</p>
<p>Ahead of the theatrical release, Deadwyler reveals the "survival materials" she would use in a post-apocalyptic world</p>
<p>After immersing herself in a violent, post-apocalyptic world for 40 Acres, Danielle Deadwyler has created a checklist of sorts — just in case things off-screen take a turn for the worse.</p>
<p>In the dystopian action-thriller, which arrives in theaters July 2, Deadwyler plays soldier and matriarch Hailey Freeman, who lives with her family on an isolated farm after the world falls to pieces. While chatting with PEOPLE about her role in the movie, the Till actress, 43, reveals what her real-life apocalypse survival strategy would entail.</p>
<p>"Look, there's a level of clandestine element that needs to be maintained," Deadwyler shares. "You gotta have survival materials, water [and] some kind of weaponry to acquire food if need be."</p>
<p>Plus, even in a post-apocalyptic world, the importance of the warm and fuzzy cannot be understated, per the actress's final two must-have items. Rounding out her checklist are "a good pack with a blanket," and "good socks" — "because you can't have wet feet," she notes.</p>
<p>Magnolia Pictures</p>
<p>Danielle Deadwyler, Michael Greyeyes, Kataem O'Connor, Haile Amare, and Jaeda LeBlanc in '40 Acres'</p>
<p>While 40 Acres — which debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in 2024 — is a story that centers survival, it also centers family, with Deadwyler's on-screen partner Galen played by Michael Greyeyes, and their eldest son Emmanuel portrayed by Kataem O'Connor.</p>
<p>The film takes place "after a series of plagues and wars leaves society in ruins," per an official synopsis. In this new world, the synopsis teases, the Freeman family is "surviving — even thriving — on a farm in the middle of nowhere... so long as they repel the occasional raiding party. But what good is surviving the end of the world if it means snuffing out your own humanity?"</p>
<p>Writer and director R.T. Thorne "infuses the dystopian narrative with contemporary relevance and an inescapable historical metaphor," per the official TIFF description, "placing Black and Indigenous characters at the centre of a story about people defending their land from those who would kill them for it without a second thought."</p>
<p>Hailey and Galen "fled the collapse along with their children, training them to fight (and, yes, kill)," the description says, teasing that after Emmanuel crosses paths with a young woman, "his need for human contact could place the whole family in jeopardy."</p>
<p>Magnolia Pictures</p>
<p>'40 Acres' movie poster</p>
<p>The family element, Deadwyler tells PEOPLE, is what drew her into the film, which "is one of those [projects] that is connected to just a familial understanding of life."</p>
<p>"This is a beautiful family drama, and it is connected to what unites us a lot, which is land," Deadwyler says.</p>
<p>Before signing onto the film, she says, "I was thinking about what does it mean to have had a life and a history on my maternal grandparents' land, the things that they have taught me and my childhood and into my adulthood about gardening, about maintaining a single space, of fighting for this space, of holding it over time, of holding it for others, of making their own way outside of systems on that space."</p>
<p>"And so when I saw that in [writer-director] R. T. Thorne's film," she continues, "When I saw this family trying to figure it out, when I saw them expressing love and all these hard moments and hard conversations and yet the joy of just showing them living daily life and being at the dinner table and turning around and shooting the s--- out of some cannibals, I said 'This is one for me.' "</p>
<p>Magnolia Pictures</p>
<p>Danielle Deadwyler (middle) in '40 Acres'</p>
<p>As for how she relates to matriarch Hailey, Deadwyler tells PEOPLE, "There's a desire to be everything as a mother, particularly in thinking about Black motherhood."</p>
<p>"There's a security that has to happen in the way that she has chosen to isolate the family, that is something I understand," the actress continues, "because you don't know when you send your child outside to just go to movies or go to the store … whether they will return."</p>
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<p>40 Acres is in theaters July 2.</p>
<p>on People</p>
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