Jodie Whittaker is to star in and executive produce The Country, a dystopian thriller short film written and directed by filmmaker Ella Grace Kennedy. The project uses a role-reversed society to examine themes of bodily autonomy, oppression and control, viewed through the lens of an extremist religious commune, and marks the latest genre work from the former Doctor Who and Broadchurch star.

The short follows a seventeen-year-old named Aaron, played by Eoin McCaul, who struggles under rigid laws imposed on the male body as doubt begins to enter his belief system. The cast also includes Anna Popplewell (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Jake Kenny-Byrne (Miss Austen), with the film produced by Charlotte Brownlee of House Productions, whose credits include The Crown and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Whittaker praised Kennedy's script as unlike anything she had read, while Kennedy said placing men at the centre of the world was intended to force audiences to confront realities that women continue to face; she is separately developing a horror feature, Home, with Anton.