CRADLE OF CIVILISATION

A “A Tenth Story View” FILM
WRITTEN BY Jeff Szusterman

Market forces run the world now. Nations exist in name only. Laws favour the few.

The Police, security forces and spy agencies are herders who keep the population strictly in line.

Pockets of resistance do remain. There are those who believe in humanity and work towards it. Towards a new and better tomorrow. They form in small groups or cells that are outlawed by the system. Yet their numbers are growing.

One of these resistors, Nicholas, finds an abandoned child in a playground. He watched her father walk away and leave her. Hours ago now. He reckons she’s not even two years.

He brings her to the house he shares with six others. There’s Soames - the imperious leader hell-bent on his mission for humanity; Candace - a nurse/midwife bereft after losing her baby; Ivor - an ex-soldier betrayed by his government; Mina - a believer who is struggling with her faith in the face of this world; Wiremu - a psychiatrist putting himself back together; and Raven - the rebellious child of privilege turned scavenger.

As they check the little girl over for signs of abuse and neglect they discover a shocking truth: Implanted inside her is a bomb

Ivor has seen it before, in Pakistan, but this is far beyond those crude IEDs - this is a sophisticated system - the detonator linked to her heartbeat. The higher her heartrate the greater the risk of detonation.

Each of them has pledged their lives to the protection of humanity. Now - with this child - those pledges are on trial...

...and who sent her into their midst?