'Hala' Trailer: 'Blockers' Star Geraldine Viswanathan Leads The Sundance Selected, Apple TV+ Coming-Of-Age Drama

Apple TV+ may have just launched with a small collection of original TV shows to try out, but they're wasting no time releasing some lower key dramas into theaters before sending them to their streaming library as the year winds down. This week brought the first trailer for The Banker starring Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony Mackie, and now we have the trailer for Hala, an acquisition Apple made after the movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival at the beginning of this year.

Hala follows Blockers star Geraldine Viswanathan as a 17-year old Pakistani-American girl who is having difficulty balancing her contemporary American life with her Pakistani cultural and religious obligations being thrust upon her by family. It's the typical coming of age drama that you expect to see at Sundance, but it still looks quite good. Watch the Hala trailer below.

This looks like a beautiful coming-of-age story, one that is very relevant for a group of young girls living in America who haven't seen their story told on the big screen before. They'll have a small window to see it in select theaters starting on November 22, 2019, and then it will become available on Apple TV+ starting on December 6.

It's always frustrating to me when movies like this are R-rated. In this case, it's simply for "a scene of sexuality," and while there are parents who try to shield their kids from those kind of things until they're 18, it's those formative teenage years leading up to that where kids need to see these kinds of stories, so they don't feel alone. Everyone has at least one movie they latched onto as teenagers because it made them feel seen and it comforted them by them know that someone knows what they're going through. Hala looks like it could be that for many people out there, so I hope those kids get a chance to see this one.

Hala also stars Jack Kilmer (Palo Alto) as the titular character's love interest, as well as Terminator: Dark Fate star Gabriel Luna, Purbi Joshi, Azad Khan and Anna Chlumsky. The film is written and directed by Minhal Baig.

Hala follows the story of seventeen-year-old Pakistani American teenager Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan), who struggles to balance desire with her familial, cultural and religious obligations. As she comes into her own, she grapples with a secret that threatens to unravel her family.