The trailer for the Italian documentary Le Quattro Volte (English translation: The Four Times) has premiered at Apple. Directed by Michelangelo Frammartino and set in Italy’s southern Calabria, it presents a look at what the film claims are the four stages of life: human, animal, vegetable and mineral, and how the soul passes from one to the other.

This preview manages to reveal bit of all of those things, particularly the animals. The mostly positive reviews suggest they play a big role in the film, which isn’t hard to believe after seeing this.

Take a look at the trailer below, or in HD over at Apple:

Synopsis: Inspired by Pythagoras’s belief in four-fold transmigration — by which the soul is passed from human to animal to vegetable to mineral — Michaelangelo Frammartino’s wondrous docu-essay traces the cycle of life through daily rituals in the southern Italian region of Calabria.

While I generally liked what this trailer, I’m not sure if the film is exactly something that I’d be jumping in anticipation to see. But it’s hard to fault someone for trying something different.

What do you think of this trailer? Do you have any interest in the subject matter, or the documentary itself?