Zulu, the film that closed the Cannes Film Festival this year, now has its first (NSFW) trailer. The movie stars Forest Whitaker and Orlando Bloom in an intense crime thriller set in South Africa in the aftermath of Apartheid. Director Jérôme Salle (Anthony Zimmer, Largo Winch) makes his English language debut in a somewhat familiar genre; high speed nail-biters certainly aren’t foreign to him, even if the language is. He also adapted the script himself (another exercise he is familiar with) from a Carol Férey novel of the same name.

The movie follows Whitaker and Bloom playing homicide detectives on a case in Cape Town which leads them on a brutal, winding investigation of deadly drugs, nefarious science experimentation, and the remnants of a race war. Judging from this preview, there will be action and twists in large supply.

Acclaimed film composer Alexandre Desplat handles the score. After his work on, among other well-received productions, Moonrise Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, I am excited to see what he does with this.

This Pathé, M6 Films, and Lobster Film joint production has yet to receive an American release date, but check out the trailer below (again, not at the office) and keep an eye out.

Watch the trailer for Zulu:

There are films that, purely based on a pitch, pique my interest. An adaptation of a James Franco novel about suburban trouble-making teens handled by a first time director is not one. The trailer for Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto delivers as much of a pleasant surprise as a trailer can, though. The often (over)told tale of impressionable girl meets delinquent boy seems to at least be visually interesting in this turn. Emma Roberts stars as said girl opposite Jack Kilmer, son of co-star Val. Franco plays a “touchy, feely” soccer coach in the screen version of his Palo Alto Stories which rang a tad obnoxious, but he has proven a capable, if sometimes annoying, actor over the years, so I will give him a probationary pass here.

It will be interesting to see how yet another director from the Coppola family handles her first project when this makes its debut in Telluride and TIFF. Chances are she’s no Francis Ford or even a Sofia, but here’s hoping she is nothing like Nicolas.

Watch the trailer for Palo Alto: