“Here was a person for whom the search meant everything,” James Gray tells National Geographic, speaking about British explorer Percy Fawcett, played by Charlie Hunnam in The Lost City of Z. “His dream of finding an ancient Amazonian civilization sustained him through unimaginable hardships, the skepticism of the scientific community, startling betrayals and years spent away from his family.” This is all captured in his latest feature, one of our early favorites of the year.
Also starring Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, and Sienna Miller, ahead of an April release, Bleecker Street and Amazon Studios have now unveiled a new U.S. trailer for the film (which was recently cut down to a PG-13 rating, albeit in a minor fashion). For those who missed the 35mm premiere at last year’s New York Film Festival, thankfully Metrograph has unveiled they’ll be showing the film in the format this April, along with a full Gray retrospective. Check out details below, along with the new trailer and gorgeous U.S. and U.K. posters.
James Gray is one of the foremost contemporary practitioners of the classically-constructed narrative drama, an art that he is a passionate and articulate advocate of. Beginning with 1995’s Little Odessa, he carved out for his personal territory the working-class environs of New York City where he was raised, and has time and again told stories of these neighborhoods and their people that are invested with pathos, dignity, and solemn beauty. With his latest, The Lost City of Z, Gray strikes out into uncharted territory—the depths of the Amazonian jungle. Metrograph will host an evening with Gray discussing this voyage and the resulting film, showing in 35mm in a sneak preview, which provides a welcome pretext to revisit his extraordinary filmography. This complete retrospective also includes The Yards (2000), We Own The Night (2007), Two Lovers (2008), and The Immigrant (2013).
Based on author David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller, THE LOST CITY OF Z tells the incredible true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), who journeys into the Amazon at the dawn of the 20th century and discovers evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilization that may have once inhabited the region. Despite being ridiculed by the scientific establishment who regard indigenous populations as “savages,” the determined Fawcett – supported by his devoted wife (Sienna Miller), son (Tom Holland) and aide-de-camp (Robert Pattinson) – returns time and again to his beloved jungle in an attempt to prove his case, culminating in his mysterious disappearance in 1925. An epically scaled tale of courage and obsession, told in James Gray’s classic filmmaking style, THE LOST CITY OF Z is a stirring tribute to the exploratory spirit and those individuals driven to achieve greatness at any cost.
The Lost City of Z opens in New York and LA on April 14 and expands nationwide on April 21.