Historians recognize the events surrounding the “Miracle of Dunkirk” as one of the pivotal moments of World War II, and now we have another look at director Christopher Nolan’s dramatic re-creation of that incident — in which more than 330,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated from the French city — courtesy of a fresh trailer.
Warner Bros. Pictures has released a new preview of the July 2017 film, which the acclaimed filmmaker directed from his own script. The film tells the story of the 1940 evacuation of Dunkirk after nearly 400,000 Belgian, Canadian, British, and French soldiers were surrounded by the German army and forced to retreat to the city’s beach and harbor. After all of the conventional methods of evacuation were destroyed by the German army, the soldiers relied upon a large number of civilian boats that were called into service to assist with the evacuation and get the soldiers to safety.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill initially referred to the incident as “a colossal military disaster,” and the subsequent evacuation “a miracle of deliverance.” The event is widely considered a pivotal moment in World War II that could have turned the war in the opposite direction if events had gone differently.
Nolan filmed much of the movie on location at and around Dunkirk, and utilized a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film to capture the grand scope of the eight-day ordeal. It will be the first feature-length film directed by Nolan since 2014’s Interstellar.
The film’s cast features quite a few Hollywood newcomers and lesser-known actors, including Fionn Whitehead (Him), Jack Lowden (’71), Aneurin Barnard (Citadel), and One Direction pop star Harry Styles. Among the higher-profile, more established actors in the film are Academy Award winner Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies), Kenneth Branagh (Valkyrie), Cillian Murphy (Inception), James D’Arcy (Cloud Atlas), and Tom Hardy (The Revenant).
Dunkirk is scheduled to arrive in IMAX and standard theaters July 21, 2017.
