Go Deep Inside the Mind of Kurt Cobain in the Trailer for 'Montage of Heck'

Warning: Watching this trailer may completely drain you.

But it looks like it’ll be worth it: Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the first authorized documentary about the late Nirvana frontman, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.

Oscar-nominated director Brett Morgen was the first filmmaker to be granted access to Cobain’s personal archives, and as this trailer proves, he dug deep, resulting in a wealth of home videos and photos that trace the intimate moments of his tragically short life (Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, and daughter Frances Bean Cobain serve as executive producers on the film).

Morgen (and just about everyone who’s studied the volatile genius) suggests that Cobain went from happy little kid to a sullen loner who took refuge in his art as his family imploded. He’d paint, write songs, draw cartoons in his notebook — anything to channel the anger and frustration he felt as a teenager in 1970s Seattle.

Obviously, the dedication to artistic expression paid off; his brooding, angry, mournful songs helped usher in the grunge era in the Pacific Northwest, and catapulted Cobain from local Gen-X hero to international icon. But, as the trailer suggests, all he really wanted was a normal family: A wife, some kids, stability. He could never find peace in what he had, and more than two decades after he took his own life at the age of 28, he has transcended his era to become a rock god for the young, the angry, and the rebellious.

Morgen told Yahoo Movies UK that 85 percent of the footage in the documentary has never been seen, and that he scoured Cobain’s collection not only for footage, but also the many pieces of art he created in his short life.

“He worked in just about every form of media he could including painting, sculpting, filmmaking, sound collages, cartoon strips, short fiction, journal writing, photography, and of course music,” the director said. “Like any artist, Kurt left behind a visual and aural autobiography of his life. It was embedded in his work. Given how expressive he was across so many platforms, his life works makes a complete cinematic canvas that invites the viewer to take a journey through Kurt’s interior world.”

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck will air on HBO on May 4.