When a close-knit farming village in the Lake District is devastated by foot and mouth disease, it falls to one woman and a mysterious Indian newcomer to save her family and restore hope to the community. Based on a true story.

First of all, let my preface my suggestions by stating that I can’t read your mind – all the character and events teeming in your head about this story.? All I can read are the words you posted.

So first off: Taking your revised version literally — again, I can’t know what you mean to say, I can only know what you said — it seems to say that the foot and mouth disease ravaged people. (After all, it’s people who dwell in villages; livestock dwell in barns and in fields.) Well, humans can be afflicted with foot and mouth disease. But the symptoms and consequences are usually mild compared to the devastation the disease inflicts on livestock.? And it is the latter who are the victims of the disease in this story.

Second: from an outsider’s perspective — and everyone who reads your script will be an outsider — the character with the more interesting problem and struggle seems to be the Indian. Why? Because he’s an outsider; he has to clear an obstacle course of prejudice and distrust that the local woman, an insider, doesn’t.

Also, it usually better to frame a logline from the perspective of one primary character, AKA the protagonist, even when (as in this story) the protagonist must find and work with an ally.

So I suggest reframing the logline (and script) from the point of view of the Indian,

And you also want to signal to logline readers that this story is not fiction, that it’s based upon a real crisis. And I presume that crisis to be the English foot and mouth disease epidemic of 2001 that required the slaughter of over 6 million animals.? Not for food, but for burial — to contain the epidemic.

So, here’s my take:
When an epidemic of foot and mouth disease infects millions of English livestock in 2001, an Indian outsider forges an unlikely friendship with a local woman to save her farming community from economic ruin.
(34 words)

Hope this helps.

Based upon your statement? “she is responsible for bringing the Indian to the village”, I suggest that? “joins forces with an Indian artist” needs to be reworded to be more forceful, needs to clearly convey that as the protagonist, she is proactive.? ?Is it accurate to say she “recruits” him?

>>> beloved dairy cows

I grew up in a rural community, worked on dairy farms, went on cattle drives. So I understand the bonds that dairymen and cattlemen develop for their livestock even though their animals are destined later or sooner for the slaughterhouse. (I got emotionally involved with the swine — what can I say? I felt sorry and outraged that such an intelligent animal was forced to live confined in its own filth.)

Anyway,? what I mean to to say is that I’m not sure city slickers will appreciate that dimension of the story from reading the logline.? ?And maybe it doesn’t matter.

Regards

?

?

Maybe something like:

After an English farming village must slaughter its beloved dairy cows to contain a devastating disease, a local woman hires an Indian artist to help her grieving community recover.
(29 words)

Note: “her grieving community” rather than “the grieving community” — implicitly underscoring her emotional and familial ties to the village.