Watch The Visceral Trailer For Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘Detroit’

The tagline for the new film Detroit says, “It’s time we knew.” That’s because most today still aren’t aware of the events surrounding the riots that rocked the city in the summer of 1967, leading to the death of 39 people. But the new film, from Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow, will go into visceral and terrifying detail about what and how everything went down. The movie’s first trailer opens with archival footage from the civil unrest and a voice-over announcing that national guardsmen, local police, and U.S. army paratroopers have all descended on the city, evoking imagery from the more recent protests that have erupted sporadically across the country in the wake of police killings of unarmed black men.

Detroit will focus specifically on the Algiers Motel incident, in which law enforcement clashed with a group of young black people after hearing reports of a shooting. In the trailer, we see that the gun fired was just a starter pistol, but that the confrontation escalated to a tragic conclusion. The film, which was written by Bigelow’s frequent collaborator Mark Boal, stars an impressive string of young stars, including John Boyega, Will Poulter, Anthony Mackie, Hannah Murray, Kaitlyn Dever, and Jack Reynor. The movie hits theaters on August 4, and you can watch the trailer below.