CONTESTING

(Working Title)

After a nuclear event rips apart the nuclear family, can memory salvage the rest? 

Film comparison: Think the edge-of-your seat adrenaline of The Hunger Games starring Jennifer Lawrence combined with the action and surprise of 24 starring Kiefer Sutherland. 

Synopsis (Episode One)

A woman and a man wake up in a room, wearing only their underclothes. They have no memory of who they are or how they got there. As they dialogue, faint memories of a common past materialize, as do strange objects that become clues to a shocking crime.

As they piece together their history and the tragic events of the terror attack in Paris from the confined space, their quest for understanding becomes a fight for survival.

They soon realize two things: a mass audience watches them recount their memories in real time as they piece together a crime. And one of them must die.

Series Outline 

The world is in a time of major turmoil ever since a nuclear event in Paris that brought Europe to its knees.

A secret organization of terrorists now promise to inflict similar violence on major cities around the world, one each year. Governments, globally, reel — not only to recover from the environmental fallout from Paris, but from the economic destruction and social fragmentation the new state of fear brings.

The peace of the last century is gone and the semblance and order, known throughout the 21st century, is starting to fade. New and surprising alliances emerge.

As governments become more authoritarian and the surveillance State becomes a more invasive and accepted norm, strange coalitions emerge. Globalism and economic nationalism collide with social justice warriors and vigilantes as old, tired political alliances fray. Alliances that worked in the past fail identity groups and the new, unknown enemy threatening more attacks both remove and reshape lines of social and political division.

The US, with the help of NATO countries, scrambles to maintain its dominance and protect global assets, especially oil and water reserves which they fear will be the next target after the symbolic destruction of the City of Lights. 

Canada, with its close proximity to the United States, becomes a major threat for the next nuclear strike.  Rich in natural resources — especially oil, lumber and water — and due to the tech boom of the late 21st century in Toronto which is a key centre of global data storage and digital infrastructure, the northern nation becomes a key political player and a satellite of the US government. 

The New North is a wild experiment — can humanity as we know it survive, or does it need to be re-made?  

Against this backdrop of lawlessness and political turmoil, Contesting is a thrilling series centred around a cast of fascinating, diverse characters that face impossible odds in a “post-everything” world.

Pilot Episode

As nation states furiously grapple with lawlessness, capital punishment becomes a global reality to deter public violence as a result of an epidemic of lawlessness.  

Episode one begins with a public justice decision, as a television audience determines the fate of a man (Jonas) and a woman (Enny) accused of a brutal school shooting that shocked the nation.  Two investigators (Boyer and Diez) who become unwitting and unlikely partners, discover there’s more to their story than meets the eye.  But can they stop the live execution before it’s too late?

As they race to intervene, they discover an even more sinister plot at work, which includes the next target of the terror network’s global plan.

Filmmakers