Day Zero – A BTG Productions Short Film

In a post-apocalyptic Cape Town, a group of people being pursued by a vicious, relentless hunter must make their way to a safe haven at all costs.

The idea for Day Zero came about as Cape Town was dealing with a very real drought, the worst it’s seen in decades. We imagined a world where the water ran out, and society collapsed. We set out to build this world, using genre to define a new story with universal appeal. Not something easy to do on an indie film budget right?

Add to this the fact that we’re super indie, with an indie budget, and it’s a much tougher endeavour. We produced Day Zero on virtually no budget, shot it on a mobile phone, borrowed props from family and asked friends to be crew members in our guerrilla-style indie film.

We knew that the only way to make this a story worth telling would be to take the rich world we’ve built, conceive a believable situation and localise it to a specific character and a very personal story. In doing so, Day Zero tackles themes of toxic masculinity, human desperation and the banality of a plausible post-apocalyptic world.

There are many doors being opened and closed in the South African film industry and after many were closed on us we decided it was time to make our own door.

Hope you enjoy what we came up with.

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