'Skin' Trailer: Jamie Bell Is A Skinhead Who Wants A Clean Slate

Based on the true story of former Neo-Nazi Bryon Widner, Skin stars Jamie Bell as a skinhead who turns FBI informant against his white supremacist group. Set to be released by A24, Skin dramatizes the story of removing Widner's removal of his tattoos and breaking out of his white-power group that was the subject in the 2011 documentary Erasing Hate. Watch the Skin trailer below.

Written and directed by Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv, who this year won an Oscar for his (unrelated) short film with the same title, Skin follows a tortured white supremacist named Bryon (Bell), who seeks to escape his life with the help of the FBI. In exchange for decoding the tattoos on his body, he undergoes 25 brutal tattoo removal surgeries. This is Nattiv's English feature film debut which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year, played at the Berlin Film Festival, and is stopping by the Tribeca Film Festival next.

I had heard of the controversial reception to Nattiv's short film Skin, which seemed like it tackled sensitive issues of racism in America with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but learning that his feature film Skin is unrelated to that short is encouraging. While his short film Skin seemed to approach American race relations from the perspective of an outsider who doesn't fully comprehend the depths of the issue, this feature-length Skin at least is based on real events. Bell looks like he is giving a powerhouse performance in the role, and the trailer certainly is promising. Not to mention the talented cast, which includes Danielle Macdonald, Vera Farmiga, Daniel Henshall, Louisa Krause, and Bill Camp.

Here is the synopsis for Skin:

After a difficult childhood drives him into the grasps of a white supremacist gang, Bryon (Bell) tries to escape to a new life, all the while questioning whether he's capable of undoing — and repenting for — the evil he's done

A24 will release Skin in select theaters starting July 26, 2019.