Boyhood is writer-director Richard Linklater’s Twelve Year Project – called so because the film was made over an actual twelve year period, following the main character, Mason (played by Ellar Coltrane the entire time) from age six to eighteen. The film has played at a number of festivals, and received heaps of praise – earning Linklater a Silver Bear Award for Best Director at the Berlin International film festival. Now you can get look at what all the fuss is about in Boyhood’s official trailer.

We already reported that the film will receive a limited theatrical release on July 11, followed by a wider release on an indeterminate date.

The trailer gives you a good idea of what your in for. It makes a point of letting you know about Linklater’s twelve years of work on the project, and what a unique work of art this is. We get little scenes of Mason (and, by extension Ellar) at various ages, along with his divorced parents (played by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, who were also involved with the film for the full twelve years) at various ages.

By the time 2013 was over, Linklater’s last film, Before Midnight – itself a cinematic oddity, as the thrid in a trilogy of films wherein each successive film came out nine years after the last – had taken home numerous awards. Let’s meet back at the end of 2014 and see how Boyhood did.

Check out what our editor, Tim Falkenberg thought of Boyhood in his review from SXSW.