Watch: Operatic First International Trailer For Cannes Winner 'Son Of Saul'

nullWhile Jacques Audiard‘s "Dheepan" wound up walking away with the Palme d’Or, in the early days of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, many were predicting that Hungarian director László Nemes‘ "Son Of Saul" would walk away with big prize (even our critic called it a frontrunner in his review). That didn’t happen, but the film took home handful of prizes from Cannes including the FIPRESCI award, and this powerful, wordless, first international trailer certainly conveys what looks to be a stirring piece of cinema. 

Set near the end of WWII, the story centers on the titular Saul, a Hungarian prisoner in a concentration camp who assists the Nazis in bringing Jews into the gas chambers, until one day he sees what he believes to be his own son killed at the hands of a guard. Here’s the official synopsis: 

October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Saul Ausländer is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. 
While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the corpse of a boy he takes for his son.
As the Sonderkommando plans a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child’s body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner’s Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial.

Sony Pictures Classics has the U.S. rights, and while no release date has yet been revealed, I wouldn’t be surprised is this is slotted as an awards season contender. Watch below.