Outside of a limited festival run along with a premiere at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, a theatrical release continues to elude Werner Herzog’s regal drama Queen of the Desert, though a new trailer has surfaced today reminding us all that the film is still teetering on the edge of release.
Revolving around Gertrude Bell – played with elegant grace by Nicole Kidman – Herzog’s latest tells the inspired tale of the British traveler, writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer, and political attaché who becomes a powerful political player in the Middle East circa 1920.
Also starring James Franco, Damian Lewis, and Robert Pattinson, on paper Queen of the Desert simply screams awards potential, though the prolonged gap between production and release suggest otherwise. Either way, Herzog’s feature is inspired by Bell’s globe-trotting adventures, who wrote her name in history as a powerful confidant for the British Empire during the twilight years of the Ottoman era.
Here’s the official synopsis:
A curious and adventurous young woman eager to explore the world outside of England, Gertrude Bell (Kidman) goes to the British embassy in Tehran where she quickly falls in love with a secretary of the embassy, Henry Cadogan (Franco). This sparks the beginning of a life-long adventure among the beautiful but misunderstood peoples and cultures of the Middle East. Along the way, her path intersects with archaeologist T.E. Lawrence (Pattinson) also known as Lawrence of Arabia, and Major Charles Doughty-Wylie (Lewis), the British Consul General in the Ottoman Empire.
Queen of the Desert is still to nail down an official release date in the States, but expect Herzog’s new drama to finally make its bow at some point in 2016.
