THE COMMUNISTS
In Development
2020
Directed and Written by
Simon Glass
Produced by
Jacob Glass & Adam Paulden
Starring
Paul Fox, James Osman
Comedy. A group of middle-class students are brainwashed by a radical left communist cult leader who promises to incite socialist revolution and establish a proletarian dictatorship in Britain. Instead, they become slaves to his own dictatorial regime...
SYNOPSIS
Yorkshire, England. On their first day at university, a group of middle-class politics students are recruited by a charismatic revolutionary cult leader John Starkhill [Paul Fox, THE SELFISH GIANT] to join his party; the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard. Pledging to incite socialist revolution and create a Communist utopia in Britain, Starkhill commands his new recruits to wage guerrilla warfare on the British ruling class.
At first, new revolutionaries Hamilton, Mavros and Navarro are only too willing to obey Starkhill’s every directive, believing him to be the true saviour of the proletariat, surrounded by devout supporters. But when paranoia grips the party and Starkhill orders his new followers to sever ties with the outside world, the young revolutionaries attempt to leave the movement - only to be tied up and driven out to a country mansion where they are subjected to interrogation, torture and an extensive programme of re-education...
Exhausted and isolated, the young revolutionaries are forced to work harder and harder until they are no longer able to think for themselves. Now completely committed to the party’s goal, the young revolutionaries are sent back out to the universities from where they came to recruit more fighters for Starkhill’s relentless revolution...
DIRECTORS STATEMENT
A satirical critique on populist party politics and the recent rise of the radical left and right in Europe and America, THE COMMUNISTS examines the allure of cult movements and the vulnerability of their followers. Influences include Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin, Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man and Michael Radford’s film adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
