Torun, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 20th Nov, 2024) The Western “Rust” will get its world premiere on Wednesday at a Polish film festival, three years after its cinematographer was killed in a tragic on-set shooting.
Hollywood star Alec Baldwin was accused of violating basic gun safety rules in the 2021 death of Halyna Hutchins, but his involuntary manslaughter trial collapsed earlier this year.
Hutchins’s mother refused to attend the premiere “when there is still no justice for my daughter”.
“Baldwin continues to increase my pain with his refusal to apologise to me and take responsibility for her death,” Olga Solovey said Tuesday.
Director Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting, will introduce the movie at the Camerimage film festival — known for celebrating cinematography — in Torun, northern Poland.
He said the “massive devastation” of the shooting left him an emotional wreck.
“‘Rust’ just became this sort of insane hurricane,” he told AFP.
“You’re just left to sort of pick up the pieces.”
The filmmaker admitted that he agonised over whether to complete the movie.
“I was definitely on the fence… There was a time when I thought I just didn’t want to make movies anymore,” he said.
He said what convinced him to finish it was learning that Hutchins’s husband wanted her final work to be seen.
Camerimage said it was also Hutchins’s “dream” to have her work shown at the festival, but that “Baldwin will not be there”.
The Emmy-winning actor was holding a revolver during a rehearsal on set in New Mexico when a live round was fired, fatally wounding 42-year-old Hutchins.
In a tragic irony, the film centres on an accidental killing — a parallel that Souza called “unsettling”.
“It’s a strange one to unpack. When people hear about it, they generally fall silent for a few moments because they can’t believe” it, he said.
