The first trailer, released on September 19, ahead of the film’s world premiere at the London Film Festival on October 9, is as tense and awe-inspiring as you’d expect—crammed with terrifying depictions of aerial bombardment, raging fires, hollowed out homes, and flooded air raid shelters.

Sir Steve McQueen's Blitz is set to close the New York Film Festival and then open the BFI London Film Festival this year, the latter a fitting context for the lauded director to send audiences into one of the most terrifying and tragically defining periods of modern British history.