A magistrate of an unknown empire sees his loyalty falter after witnessing the brutal tactics of a ruthless colonel in the new trailer for Ciro Guerra’s upcoming adaptation of the J.M. Coetzee novel, Waiting for the Barbarians.
The film stars Mark Rylance as the unnamed Magistrate, who oversees a frontier settlement at the outer reaches of a vast empire. But as the magistrate prepares for his retirement, Colonel Joll — played by Johnny Depp in a pair of sinister-looking round, black sunglasses — arrives at the settlement, with orders to keep tabs on the so-called “barbarians” on the other side of the wall.
The trailer doesn’t give away much, but shows Colonel Joll’s penchant for terrorizing and torturing people during his interrogations, while Robert Pattinson appears an upstart officer happy to uphold Joll’s new status quo. In turn, the Magistrate starts to question his own loyalty to the empire and sets out to return a girl, tortured by Joll, to her family.
Waiting for the Barbarians is set to arrive on digital and on-demand platforms August 7th.
