Emotional Okja trailer celebrates mankind's bond with beasts

With his 2006 creature feature The Host, Bong Joon-ho presented a warning to humanity about the destructive nature of pollution; the new trailer for Netflix’s Okja, which dropped Thursday afternoon, similarly sees the filmmaker exploring themes of mankind’s connection to the environment, this time framed through the eyes of a young girl, Mija (An Seo Hyun) and the powerful bond she shares with a fantastical creature.

The film follows the unlikely pair as they come up together in the mountains of South Korea, though their relationship soon comes under siege after a greedy conglomerate, the Mirando Corporation, fronted by a menacing, self-centered CEO (Tilda Swinton), steals Okja as a means to launch a new line of mass-marketed meat.

Judging by the new preview, Mija’s quest to bring Okja home sees her crossing paths with a band of colorful characters, including Jake Gyllenhaal as a zoologist TV personality and Paul Dano as the leader of an animal rights advocacy group.

Joon-ho’s latest, which marks his first directorial feature since 2013’s Snowpiercer, debuted last month in competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where it received mostly positive reviews (and comparisons to Steven Spielberg’s E.T.) from movie critics.

“The biggest wars that we’re waging right now as a society, unfortunately, is against nature and women, surprisingly,” The Walking Dead star Steven Yeun, who plays one of Dano’s character’s associates in Okja, previously told EW of the film at Cannes. “And the cool part about this film is you’re watching a bookend of nature. You start in the mountains and then you end in the mountains, and you’re having this young girl take you through that journey.”

Okja opens June 28 in limited release, the same day it begins streaming on Netflix. Watch the new trailer above.