With less than two months to go until the year is over, we’ve seen a preview of every release — except one. That is, until tonight. Finally, after a production earlier this year, Paramount Pictures have released the first trailer for Ava DuVernay‘s first studio feature Selma. Following Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo), the film tracks his specific 1965 journey from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., as he battled for equal voting rights.
The first trailer sells an incredibly tense drama with gorgeous photography from Bradford Young (whose reteaming with DuVernay after their indie break-out Middle of Nowhere). With a couple of connections to The Butler, it’ll no doubt get compared, but for those that didn’t connect with the sentimentality of that film, this looks take on a more accurate tone. Also starring Tom Wilkinson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Alessandro Nivola, Giovanni Ribisi Common, Carmen Ejogo, Lorraine Toussaint, Tim Roth, and Oprah Winfrey, check out the trailer and poster below.
SELMA is the story of a movement. The film chronicles the tumultuous three-month period in 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement. Director Ava DuVernay’s SELMA tells the story of how the revered leader and visionary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) and his brothers and sisters in the movement prompted change that forever altered history.
Selma opens on December 25th and then expands on January 9th.