While this year’s Cannes Film Festival recently wrapped up (see our complete coverage here), there’s still a handful of hold-overs from last year’s festival that are awaiting their U.S. debut. Today we have the domestic trailer for one of our favorites from the 2013 event, Ari Folman‘s Waltz With Bashir follow-up, The Congress.
Led by Robin Wright as a version of herself, she’s depicted as an aging actress who has sold Hollywood digital rights to her younger likeness as Folman loosely adapts Stanislaw Lem‘s The Futurological Congress here. Being a hybrid animation/live-action feature, in our review we said it’s “trippy, bizarre, surreal and hallucinatory,” as well as “delightfully surreal and spectacular in its scope, it’s a strong testament to the originality and talent behind Folman’s vision of where cinema can take us in the years to come.”
As one can see in the below trailer (which includes one of our quotes), it’s bound to be one of the most inventive releases this summer, courtesy of Drafthouse Films, and one we highly recommend. Also starring Harvey Keitel, Danny Huston, Paul Giamatti, Michael Stahl-David, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Jon Hamm, check out the trailer below.
More than two decades after catapulting to stardom with The Princess Bride, an aging actress (Robin Wright, playing a version of herself) decides to take her final job: preserving her digital likeness for a future Hollywood. Through a deal brokered by her loyal, longtime agent (Harvey Keitel) and the head of Miramount Studios (Danny Huston), her alias will be controlled by the studio, and will star in any film they want with no restrictions. In return, she receives healthy compensation so she can care for her ailing son and her digitized character will stay forever young. Twenty years later, under the creative vision of the studio’s head animator (Jon Hamm), Wright’s digital double rises to immortal stardom. With her contract expiring, she is invited to take part in “The Congress” convention as she makes her comeback straight into the world of future fantasy cinema.
The Congress opens on August 29th, 2014.