PHOTOS VIDEO Boyhood trailer starring young actor filmed over 12 years

The first trailer for Richard Linklater’s loooooong-anticipated film Boyhood has been released featuring a cast that was filmed over a period of twelve years, including the movie’s main character, played by Ellar Coltrane, who started the project in 2002 when he was only six years old. The result (as you can also see in the photos above) is stunning.

Here’s the Youtube description of the ground-breaking film:

Richard Linklater’s BOYHOOD — a fictional drama made with the same group of actors over a 12-year period from 2002-2013 — takes a one-of-a-kind trip, at once epic and intimate, through the exhilaration of childhood, the seismic shifts of a modern family and the very passage of time.

The film tracks 6 year-old Mason (Ellar Coltrane) over life’s most radically fluctuating decade, through a familiar whirl of family moves, family controversies, faltering marriages, re-marriages, new schools, first loves, lost loves, good times, scary times and a constantly unfolding mix of heartbreak and wonder. But the results are unpredictable, as one moment braids into the next, entwining into a deeply personal experience of the incidents that shape us as we grow up and the ever-changing nature of our lives.

As the story begins, dreamy-eyed grade-schooler Mason faces upheaval: his devoted, struggling single mom Olivia (Patricia Arquette) has decided to move him and older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) to Houston — just as their long-absent father Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) returns from Alaska to re-enter their world. Thus begins life’s non-stop flux. Yet through a tide of parents and stepparents, girls, teachers and bosses, dangers, yearnings and creative passions, Mason emerges to head down his own road.

Director Richard Linklater and actor Ethan Hawke are no strangers to storylines that play out over more than a decade — both on- and off-screen. The two worked together on 1995’s Before Sunrise as well as the sequels, which pick up with the characters in real time, Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013).

Boyhood is scheduled for release on July 11, 2014.