'A Prayer Before Dawn' Trailer: A24's Latest Steps Into The Ring

A24, the indie film company who released modern masterpieces like Under the Skin and Moonlight, is headed to prison...for their next movie, at least.

A24's latest, A Prayer Before Dawn, is based on the true story of an English boxer incarcerated in two of Thailand's most notorious prisons. There, he begins taking part in Muay Thai boxing tournaments. The film was shot in a real Thai prison with a cast of primarily real inmates, and a new trailer has just arrived to give us a look at the results. Watch the A Prayer Before Dawn trailer below.

A24 has helped release a wealth of exciting independent films, including Under the Skin, The Witch, The Lobster, Spring Breakers and The Florida Project. They recently struck Oscar gold with Moonlight. They show no signs of slowing down any time soon, and their latest film looks incredibly tense. In Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire's A Prayer Before Dawn, Joe Cole (Green Room) plays real-life English boxer Billy Moore. The future looks bleak for Moore when ends up incarcerated in two different prisons in Thailand, but a series of Muay Thai boxing tournaments might be his salvation. Watch the trailer below.

This looks both intense and dramatic; a blistering combination of brutal fight scenes and searing drama. There's a wealth of potential here, and early reviews of the film out of this year's Cannes Film Festival have been almost uniformly positive, with Variety saying, "A big, bleeding feat of extreme cinema, given elevating human dimension by rising star Joe Cole's ferociously physical lead performance," and The Guardian calling the film "lean and trim and unwavering in its task." Here's the official synopsis:

A Prayer Before Dawn is the remarkable true story of Billy Moore, a young English boxer incarcerated in two of Thailand's most notorious prisons. He is quickly thrown into a terrifying world of drugs and gang violence, but when the prison authorities allow him to take part in the Muay Thai boxing tournaments, he realizes this might be his chance to get out. Billy embarks on a relentless, action-packed journey from one savage fight to the next, stopping at nothing to do whatever he must to preserve his life and regain his freedom. Shot in a an actual Thai prison with a cast of primarily real inmates, A Prayer Before Dawn is a visceral, thrilling journey through an unforgettable hell on earth.

A Prayer Before Dawn opens in 2018.