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Stars: Jessica Alexander, Anja Taljaard, Hilton Pelser, Adrienne Pearce, Kitty Harris, Brent Vermeulen | Written by Kelsey Egan, Emma Lungiswa de Wet | Directed by Kelsey Egan

A brand-new post-apocalyptic gothic sci-fi melodrama from South Africa, Glasshouse is one of a growing number of genre films to stem from the country, yet one that is not really known for its genre output but one whose culture and landscape are just rife with terrifying possibilities. The film stars British actress Jessica Alexander (the upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid) and newcomer Anja Taljaard as the sisters, Bee and Evie, opposite Hilton Pelser as The Stranger.

Glasshouse is set after The Shred, an airborne dementia, has left humanity roaming like lost and dangerous animals, unable to remember who they are. Confined to their airtight glasshouse, a family does what they must to survive – until the sisters are seduced by a stranger who upsets the family’s rituals,...

A mother and her daughters hole up in a Victorian conservatory, hiding from a devastating pandemic that lays waste to human memory

Shot in a Victorian hothouse in South Africa with a mixed cast of local actors and the odd imported Brit – including Jessica Alexander, soon be seen in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid – this tense dystopian horror-thriller feels geographically non-specific, almost as if it were taking place in some kind of dream world. That touch of hazy vagueness is just right for Sa director and co-writer Kelsey Egan’s cracking feature debut (co-written with Emma Lungiswa De Wet) which imagines a family of survivors hiding out in the title’s botanical conservatory after a pandemic has ravaged most of the world’s population.

The invisible threat here is an airborne virus called “the shred” which wipes out memories and leaves its victims in a bestial state, unable to remember even their own names.

A fairytale location

Already one of the most talked-about films among critics attending 2021’s Fantasia International Film Festival, South African science fiction story Glasshouse presents a post-Apocalyptic world as you’ve never seen it before. At the heart of a bleached desert sits a little island of green where a family, presided over by a strict but loving matriarch, holds out against a memory-destroying airborne pandemic by sheltering in an elegant Victorian glasshouse. All is well until a stranger arrives, unsettling their carefully maintained equilibrium.

Kelsey Egan

Meeting director Kelsey Egan in the run-up to the festival, I told her that something that I've always kind of wondered about is what women do in a situation like that and how they survive. It's strange to see a piece of post-Apocalyptic fiction which looks so pretty, not at all like what we're used to encountering...

South Africa’s Local Motion Pictures, whose dystopian sci-fi feature “Glasshouse” will world premiere at the Fantasia Intl. Film Festival this month, has signed a three-picture deal with leading SVOD service Showmax.

Under the agreement, which Local Motion signed in association with Crave Pictures, the company will produce a slate of films to be directed by “Glasshouse” helmer Kelsey Egan.

Associate producer Emma Lungiswa de Wet, who co-wrote “Glasshouse” with Egan, says the trio of films will shine a new and unsettling light on South Africa, which continues to reckon with the legacy of Apartheid nearly three decades since its transition to democracy.

“A dystopian slate allows us to look at the underbelly of the dream – what’s at the end of the Rainbow Nation?” said Lungiswa de Wet. “We have a long brutal history that we’re only beginning to come to terms with. We’re a newish democracy,...