The Brutalist | First trailer lands for Oscar-tipped drama

Tipped to be one of the major awards contenders this year, you can now catch your first look at The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody.

It’s no grand claim to say that the awards race for Best Picture at the Oscars (not to mention other awards shows) is wide open right now. No clear favourite has emerged yet although the next couple of months sees the release of a clutch of contenders, one of which is The Brutalist, an architectural drama that weighs in at three and a a half hours long and arrives in the US courtesy of A24.

Adrien Brody headlines the film, and as the official synopsis describes, he ‘stars as a Hungarian Holocaust survivor struggling to revive his career as an architect in the United States. It traces his life over nearly four decades as he immigrates to the U.S. and begins working for a rich but hot-headed man (Guy Pearce) who wants to build an ambitious community center. He helps the survivor reunite with his ailing wife (Felicity Jones) and begin to construct the brutalist building of his dreams, but a fateful incident changes all of their lives forever.’

We’ve seen Brutalist architecture feature effectively in film and videogames before, from A Clockwork Orange to Attack The Block. This film though looks to root the concrete-heavy aesthetic as a character within the film in a way that we’ve yet to experience.

Brady Corbet’s film cost just $10m to make and was shot on film. Stories about the canisters being ported around the festivals have already become the stuff of legend, and since debuting at the Venice Film Festival, the film has been hailed as something special.

Focus Features – and thus Universal – is handling distribution here in the UK, and has earmarked it for 24th January 2025.

Meanwhile, over in the US, A24 has released the first trailer, which is why we’ve all gathered together in this place, at this moment in time. Take it away…