GRAIN / BUĞDAY

What is it that the two men are after in Dead Lands in an indefinite near future?
The global corporations have established cities and agricultural zones in areas where the climate is relatively good. These cities are populated by the elites, corporation’s executives, scientists, and those multi-ethnic immigrants who have been admitted after passing genetic compatibility tests.
The immigrant masses struggle with hunger and epidemics. Professor Erol Erin, a seed genetics specialist, lives in a city protected from them by sophisticated armed forces and magnetic walls. For unknown reasons, the city’s agricultural plantations have been hit by a genetic crisis - and, as a result, by massive crop failure.

„Prior to beginning the filming Grain, and while on a search for a shooting location of the kind of a ruined urban landscape seen in Detroit and its environs, I personally encountered a number of refugees from the Middle East, and then – while in the process of shooting – I came across countless numbers of Syrian refugees in many places in Turkey’s Anatolia. During this time I also witnessed the poverty stricken who were trying to survive on Stockholm’s freezing streets and saw the continent’s invisible yet very real borders. The film’s story thus intersected with today’s realities.“

Semih Kaplanoğlu