It was announced yesterday that principal photography had officially begun in Winnipeg, MB on The Divide. Xavier Gens, the French filmmaker behind the $100-million dollar-grossing Hitman and the awesome slasher Frontier(s), directs from a script by Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean. This morning we got our hands on the first ever still from the “mindbender – a suspense-ridden, character-driven apocalyptic action thriller” that focuses on a small set of divisive individuals all vying for the primal chance to survive.

The self-contained story concerns six men, two women, and a little girl who find temporary solace and shelter in the dank basement of their shared apartment building in New York City.

With no one to turn to but each other, the desolate group — Eva (Lauren German from “A Walk to Remember” and “Hostel: Part II” and most recently the ABC series “Happy Town”), Josh (Milo Ventimiglia from the NBC show “Heroes”), the curmudgeonly Mickey (Michael Biehn, from “The Terminator”, “The Abyss”, “Tombstone”), Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette, from “Pulp Fiction”), Delvin (Courtney B. Vance, last seen on ABC’s futuristic television series “Flash Forward”), Adrien (Ashton Holmes, from “History Of Violence”, “The Pacific”), and Bobby (Michael Eklund, from Paul Gross’s “Gunless”) — are increasingly at odds with one another in the cramped quarters. Also starring in the film are Ivan Gonzalez and 11-year-old newcomer Abbey Thickson.

Gens raises the question: “Does the end of civilization equal the end of humanity?”

Watch for the thrilling film to get to the root of this human dilemma in 2011.