Director Alfons Adetuyi has wrapped the Canadian production leg of his new feature Dreams of the Moon in Sudbury, Ont., with a shoot in Cape Town, South Africa coming later this year.

The Cape Town shoot for the 1970s-set period piece will be overseen by South African co-producer Horace Rayners, and utilize local crew and locations. The project marks helmer Adetuyi’s latest Canada–South Africa copro, following the TV series Ekhaya: A Family Chronicle and Jozi-H and the feature Love Jacked, which was released theatrically in the U.S. and Canada before being picked up by Netflix.

Dreams of the Moon follows a young Black girl (Riele Downs, Darby of the Dead) whose dreams of going to space seem to come one step closer when a team of NASA astronauts arrives in her small Canadian mining town. The film is inspired by the real-life 1971 NASA training mission for Apollo 16 that took place in northern Ontario.

In addition to Downs, the cast includes Evan Ellison (She Came to Me), John Daniel (Wayward), Karen LeBlanc (Nurse.Fighter.Boy), Keith David (They Live) and Gbenga Akinnagbe (The Wire).

Adetuyi (pictured) is directing and producing the film under his Toronto-based Inner City Films (ICF) banner, and also serves as co-writer with Dennis Foon. Cora Tonno and Lisa Di Michele are executive producers for ICF, with Rayners and Sidney Chiu serving as coproducers. Elevation Pictures is handling distribution in Canada.

The project is supported by funders Telefilm Canada, Canada Media Fund, Ontario Creates, Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC), AfroGlobal Media and Media Productions 2C, and was made possible by Creative Export Canada.

Photo courtesy of Inner City Films