The Sanctuary

2012, 15 minutes

Inspired by A Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

In a dystopian future, the vast majority of women have slowly grown infertile over a number of long decades. With society in ruins, and the ‘infertile underclass’ rioting against an oppressive military government, the wealthy and greedy have prospered in humanities darkest hour. The fertile are rounded up and imprisoned in privately guarded institutions known as ‘Sanctuaries’. These women are used ‘for the survival of humanity’, but really, they are merely tools to enrich the already affluent. The unfortunate residents of the Sanctuaries are drugged and kept docile in order to push them through their disturbing sentences. But when a Sanctuary resident known as 'Surrogate 27' stops taking her medication, she begins to piece together the fractured imagery of her past which firmly plants her urge for freedom… The Sanctuary is a new short film being developed in the North East of England. Concept by Victoria Gibson, Written by Dan Major (RTS Award Nominee; The Nobodies) and Directed by Christopher Andrew (Who's short films have been screened in the likes of the Curzon Cinema, London, the Showroom, Sheffield and the Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle).

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