The 'If Beale Street Could Talk' Trailer Will Make You Believe In Love Again

For those looking for a good cry, look no further than the official trailer for If Beale Street Could Talk. From its jazz-infused soundtrack to its heartbreaking young romantic leads to Regina King's powerful maternal instinct, director Barry Jenkins' follow-up to 2016's Best Picture winner Moonlight will make you feel all the feels. But, most importantly, If Beale Street Could Talk will make you believe in the power of love.

"Are you ready for this?" Fonny (Stephen James) asks his fiancé Tish (KiKi Layne) in the first few seconds of the trailer for the film, which is set in Harlem in the early 1970s. But, it's also the question those watching should ask themselves before diving into this clip, which is not for the faint of heart.

After Fonny is wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, Tish must fight for to get him back before the birth of their child. The look Fonny gives after she tells him, not with words, but with her eyes, that she's pregnant as he sits in jail is agonizing. "I want to hold you in my arms," he says crying. "I gotta hold our baby in our arms."

"We'll find a way," is all Tish tells Fonny and you want to believe her. You have to believe that this story can have a happy ending. It's not easy, though, as depicted in the trailer, since Tish is fighting an unfair system and unforgiving society that is doing all it can to keep her apart from the one she loves.

But she's not doing it alone. Her family stands by her, including her mother played by King. "Remember love is what brought you here. And if you trusted love this far. Don't panic now," King's character says before whispering. "Trust it all the way." That's the message of the movie — "trust love all the way" — and the trailer shows the hope and drive that comes with love even in the hardest of times.

Jenkins told Deadline at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month that it was this focus on "young black love" that made him want to adapt James Baldwin's 1974 novel. “There was something very pure about young black love that was depicted and also the family dynamic of the Rivers and the Hunts families,” Jenkins said. “It just grabbed me.”

Jenkins has also told Entertainment Weekly that he feels like If Beale Street Could Talk is a companion piece to Moonlight in that it's very realistic. While filming, Jenkins couldn't help but think that everything happening in If Beale Street Could Talk, based on a book written nearly 45 years ago, could still happen today: the false arrest of a Black man, the fight for justice, a family being torn apart. "I think that was proof positive of what I hope people take from the film. Which is [that] America has come a long way, there have been so many progresses that we’ve all made," Jenkins said, "yet there’s still so much farther to go. And if we don’t always pay attention to the distance we have to travel, we won’t get anywhere.”

The wave of emotions that will hit you while watching the trailer for If Beale Street Could Talk might leave you grabbing for the Kleenex, but it will also have you marking your calendar as a reminder to buy some more before it hits theaters this fall.