‘Atropia’ Trailer: Alia Shawkat and Callum Turner Have a Romance in a Fake Middle East

The Sundance winner will receive a limited release next month with an expansion targeted for January 2026.

Get ready for a meta time at the movies, as the first trailer for “Atropia” has just dropped (watch below), ahead of the Sundance winner’s limited release on December 12. Directed by actor-turned-filmmaker Hailey Benton Gates, known for her work in front of the camera as Josh O’Connor’s love-lorn Tinder date Helen in “Challengers,” “Atropia” is her feature directorial debut.

The film stars an impressive cast, including Callum Turner, Alia Shawkat, Zahra Alzubaidi, Tim Heidecker, Jane Levy, Tony Shawkat, and Chloe Sevigny. A satire of the military-industrial-entertainment complext, “Atropia” is based on real-life U.S. military bases that simulate foreign environments to prepare troops for overseas combat or help them to recover after traumatic experiences. Shawkat plays an actress who signs up to portray an Iraqi civilian on one of these bases in California that’s been made over to look like the Middle East, where she falls in love with a soldier (Callum Turner) suffering from PTSD.

Produced by Luca Guadagnino, Naima Abed, Emilie Georges, Lana Kim, and Jett Steiger, “Atropia” won the biggest prize at Sundance 2025: the juried U.S. Dramatic Competition award.

“I tried to make a documentary about [the subject of fake overseas villages on military bases] first,” Gates told IndieWire at our Sundance Studio earlier this year. She also just wrapped a part in Kristoffer Borgli’s upcoming “The Drama” for A24. “So I did a lot of research and visited a bunch of the bases. Sort of working my way up the DoD, and they weren’t interested in my documentary. So then I thought it was a subject ripe for satire. I think America’s misunderstanding of the people they’re invading is inherently comedic. And I was really inspired by ‘M*A*S*H’ and the Lubitsch film ‘To Be or Not to Be,’ which is also a story of actors. I love movies like that where the tone turns on a dime.”

Vertical will give “Atropia” a limited release on Friday, December 12 with an expansion targeted for January 2026. Check out the trailer below.