...and this is the first image

The first picture has been released from Chris Morris’s new film The Day Shall Come – as its world premiere is revealed.

Described as ‘an emotionally gripping, laugh out loud thriller’, the 87-minute film will get its first public screening at the South By South West festival in Austin, Texas, in March.

On Saturday, Chortle exclusively revealed details of the plot, which sees the Four Lions director return to the War On Terror.

Relatively unknown Marchant Davis – pictured above – plays Moses, an impoverished preacher in Miami offered cash to save his family from eviction. He has no idea that his sponsor works for the FBI, who plan to turn him into a criminal by fuelling his madcap revolutionary dreams. However the operation goes awry.

The character of Moses appears to draw upon the life of Malcolm X. His full name in the film's script is Moses Al Bey Al Shabazz. Bey means ‘leader’ and Shabazz was the surname taken by Malcolm X after he repudiated the Nation of Islam. Rapper and actor Malcolm M Mays also plays a character known as X in the film.

 The Day Shall Come also stars Anna Kendrick as an FBI operative called Kendra Glack. while Orange Is The New Black's Danielle Brooks is Venus, the mother of Moses's seven-year-old daughter, Rosa, played by Calah Lanh

Fonejacker’s Kayvan Novak plays Reza the Shopkeeper, whom Chortle believes to be a Muslim arms dealer, while stand-ups Jim Gaffigan and James Adomian also have roles, the latter paying a police officer.

The cast also includes  Rupert Friend, who starred in The Young Victoria and The Death Of Stalin, True Blood's Denis O’Hare, and Iranian-American actor Pej Vahdat.

 Explosive set-pieces in the film – which Morris co-wrote with Peep Show’s Jesse Armstrong – include an FBI SWAT team conducting an armed siege and Moses taking possession of a rocket launcher.

Most of the film was shot in the  Dominican Republic and Florida in the summer of 2017, but the crew returned to the Caribbean for reshoots in March last year.

The official blurb that producers submitted to the South By South West festival reads: ‘Based on 100 true stories, the explosive new film from Chris Morris is an emotionally gripping, laugh out loud thriller that exposes the dark farce at the heart of the homeland security project: It is harder to catch a real terrorist than it is to manufacture your own.’

Published: 17 Jan 2019