Chris Mor­ris is back with incen­di­ary satire The Day Shall Come

Near­ly a decade on from the release of his explo­sive debut fea­ture, Four Lions, Chris Mor­ris is back with his long-await­ed fol­low-up, tak­ing his dis­tinct brand of satire across the pond for a scathing cri­tique of US home­land secu­ri­ty policy.

Based on 100 true sto­ries, The Day Shall Come stars Marchánt Davis as a well-mean­ing but delud­ed Mia­mi preach­er who becomes caught up in a far­ci­cal ter­ror­ism plot orches­trat­ed in part by Anna Kendrick’s ambi­tious FBI agent. It’s as inci­sive and out­ra­geous a polit­i­cal com­e­dy as you’d expect from the man who essen­tial­ly invent­ed the con­cept of fake news some 25 years ago.

Brass Eye and The Day Today co-cre­ator Mor­ris has giv­en an incen­di­ary director’s state­ment sum­maris­ing the film’s plot and what inspired him to make it. We’ve decid­ed to print it in full below, because it real­ly is quite something:

“The sto­ry that kicked off this film was like a brick hurled from Mia­mi to Lon­don. It was a lie that I didn’t know was a lie and it result­ed in a farce about para­noia, decep­tion, delu­sion and injus­tice that reflects an unfor­tu­nate truth: Find­ing a real ter­ror­ist is hard­er than cre­at­ing your own

The lie

“Break­ing news! The US Attor­ney Gen­er­al is announc­ing the sen­sa­tion­al arrest of an army based in Mia­mi, about to launch a full ground war on Amer­i­ca. The FBI had saved the Nation. The world could sleep well tonight. ​‘A full ground war’? I am shocked.

“Two years lat­er in Wash­ing­ton DC I met a wit­ness from the result­ing tri­al and dis­cov­ered this ter­ri­fy­ing coup would have been pulled off by sev­en con­struc­tion work­ers rid­ing into Chica­go on hors­es. The idea was a fan­ta­sy, spun to make mon­ey. They had no guns – and no hors­es. An FBI infor­mant had offered them $50,000 to attack Amer­i­ca. They were broke, so they riffed ideas until he was hap­py. They claimed they could knock over the Seers Tow­er, swamp the city with a tidal wave, and seize con­trol by rid­ing in like cavalry.

“The gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed it as an Al Qae­da plot big­ger than ⁹⁄₁₁. These guys weren’t even Mus­lims, they were Hait­ian Catholics. It took three tri­als to find them guilty. They were all jailed as terrorists.

A Hun­dred True Stories

“I dis­cov­ered this was not a freak­ish one off. Since ⁹⁄₁₁ it has become Stan­dard Oper­at­ing Pro­ce­dure. Infor­mants encour­age a Per­son of Inter­est to break the law and when they do, the FBI arrest them. Each plan is put togeth­er with the fed­er­al attor­ney. Arrest is delayed until the case will play in court. So the con­vic­tion rate is 98 per cent. The typ­i­cal sen­tence is 25 years.

“Inves­ti­gat­ing AG Gon­za­les’ inter­na­tion­al lie took me all over Amer­i­ca. I met fam­i­lies of peo­ple who’d been jailed, their lawyers, FBI infor­mants, pros­e­cu­tors, police, sher­iffs and FBI agents. I dis­cov­ered the legal tech­ni­cal­i­ties and the work­place dynam­ics. I got to know neigh­bour­hoods and peo­ple in places like Detroit, Orange Coun­ty, Chica­go and Wash­ing­ton DC.

“These sto­ries were com­pelling and often absurd. The con­trivances were com­ic. The repeat­ed sto­ry is a cat and mouse game where the mouse doesn’t even know the cat exists…

Find­ing a real ter­ror­ist is hard­er than cre­at­ing your own

“The Day Shall Come reflects how insti­tu­tion­al­ized para­noia cor­rupts our think­ing. Through­out the West, the Glob­al War on Ter­ror, now so baked in it no longer requires a name, has erod­ed free­doms it was declared to protect.

“The film tells the sto­ry of a per­son walk­ing blind into a false real­i­ty pro­grammed to blow up in his face. That per­son is a fringe preach­er called Moses. The false real­i­ty is cre­at­ed by the FBI and writ­ten like a script. Moses has no idea this is hap­pen­ing or that their plot­line ends with him in jail.

“With his wife Venus, Moses runs a mis­sion offer­ing local youth sal­va­tion through reli­gion, edu­ca­tion, self-empow­er­ment and farm­ing. Their hero is the Hait­ian slave rebel Gen­er­al Tou­s­saint. This is their life, these are their trou­bles. Here is Moses preach­ing on Face­book Live about right­ing the wrongs of his­to­ry. Here is the FBI watch­ing him, won­der­ing if he is a threat, ask­ing them­selves a ques­tion that leads only one way: What if we do noth­ing – and this guy tries to destroy Amer­i­ca with his army of four grown-ups and a kid?”

The Day Shall Come is released 11 October.