Trailer: George Miller’s ‘Three Thousand Years of Longing’ conjures up fantasy and mayhem with Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba

MGM and United Artists Releasing have offered the full trailer for George Miller’s latest creation, Three Thousand Years of Longing, starring Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton and Screen Actors Guild Award winner Idris Elba. The film premiered out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival and is Miller’s first film since his Oscar-winning opus, 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road.

In the film, Swinton plays Dr. Alithea Binnie, an academic content with life and a creature of reason. While in Istanbul attending a conference, she happens to encounter a Djinn (Elba) who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. 

Problems immediately ensue as first, she doubts that he is real and second, because she is a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The Djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past. Eventually she is beguiled and makes a wish that surprises them both.

Miller directs and wrote the screenplay with Augusta Gore based on the short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A.S. Byatt

MGM/UAR will release Three Thousand Years of Longing from its bottle only in theaters on August 31. Here is the trailer.

Photo courtesy of Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Inc.