Kristen Stewart‘s turn as Jean Seberg will have you feeling breathless.
Amazon unveiled the first trailer for the Benedict Andrews-directed biographical drama about the late French New Wave actress, who, after rising to prominence in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 hit Breathless, was reportedly targeted by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI because of her support for the Black Panther Party and her relationship with civil rights activist (and cousin of Malcolm X), Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie).
“They’ve tapped our phones. They’re listening. I can hear these little clicks on the line,” Stewart says in the clip after footage shows her version of the screen legend lending her public persona to advance the causes of racial inequality in America. “I think it’s the government.”
The trailer goes on to document the actress’ mental unraveling, which culminated in a suspected death by suicide at age 40 in 1979, after she sought psychiatric treatment in the wake of the FBI’s campaign against her.
“Whenever you do a movie about a real person — especially if they’re no longer living — [it feels] like that thing where, if someone passes away, you wonder if they can see you pick your nose or something. You wonder: Are they overlooking? [I would feel it] every single time there was a cat that would run through the frame!” Stewart previously told EW of playing Seberg. “I always wondered if we were doing things right. In this weird fantasy world, I became so close to her in my own little psyche of making this movie. If she [would’ve been able to] walk into a room, I would [feel] like a sister, or if someone said a bad word about her I’d [defend her] like, ‘Hey! She existed!” like I knew her. Anything that would happen on set that was a little eerie, I always attributed it to her!”
Seberg — also starring Zazie Beetz, Jack O’Connell, Margaret Qualley, and Vince Vaughn — releases Dec. 13 in theaters. Watch the film’s first trailer above.
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