Atropia Trailer: Alia Shawkat Goes Through the Motions of War in Sundance Winner

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, where it picked up the Grand Jury Prize, Hailey Benton Gates’ debut feature Atropia has taken some time to find distribution. However, the Luca Guadagnino-produced satire starring Shawkat, Callum Turner, Zahra Alzubaidi, Tony Shawkat, Jane Levy, Tim Heidecker, Lola Kirke, and Chloe Sevigny will open before the end of the year. Ahead of Vertical’s December 12 release, the first trailer has now arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “Welcome to Atropia: a fake nation created by the U.S. military to train soldiers before their deployment. These simulated towns—built by Hollywood set designers—are brought to life by role players hired to create a sense of ‘authenticity.’ When an aspiring actress (Alia Shawkat) in a military role-playing facility falls in love with a soldier (Callum Turner) cast as an insurgent, their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance. What unfolds is an audaciously funny satire that asks: In the performance of war, who are the winners and who are the losers?“

Jake Kring-Schreifels said in his Sundance review, “Atropia, writer-director Hailey Gates’ half-successful send-up of the War on Terror, doesn’t waste time showing you how it all works. In a cliché opening sequence lifted from the start of many Bush-era war dramas, she captures the everyday bustle of a thriving Middle Eastern intersection as American troops patrol sidewalks and storefronts. Then, quickly, terrorists scatter around, scream ‘Death to America,’ and strap IEDs to a car that explodes and sends severed body parts and screams into the thick, dusty air. It’s a harrowing event until a loudspeaker sounds ‘Cut,’ allowing everyone to drop character and complain to a pyrotechnics team about the fake donkey whose dynamite pack never ignited.” 

See the trailer below.