The first teaser for Nate Parker’s slave revolt drama “The Birth of a Nation” debuted on Friday.

The film, which won the Audience Award for a U.S. Drama and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, stars Parker as Nat Turner, who led a 48-hour slave rebellion against his white masters. Armie Hammer and Aja Naomi King co-star alongside Jackie Earle Haley and Jayson Warner Smith. Parker also produced, wrote and directed.

The trailer is set to the song Andra Day’s “Rise Up” and reportedly had everyone at CinemaCon in tears when it debuted earlier this week. The trailer also shows the most talked about scene at Sundance — a little while girl leading a little black girl around the yard by a leash made of rope.

Fox Searchlight closed a record-breaking deal to acquire worldwide rights to Nate Parker’s film for $17.5 million, as TheWrap reported in January.

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The sum is believed to be the most paid for any film in Sundance history, and reflects a bidding war driven by deep-pocketed streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon.

“The Birth of a Nation” received multiple standing ovations during its debut at Sundance, with TheWrap’s Jeff Sneider writing that the film represents the “birth of a major new talent.”

The film comes along as Hollywood finds itself embroiled in questions of diversity and inclusion, as no actors of color received an Academy Award nomination for the second year in a row.

Parker told TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman that he was so intrigued with the story of Nat Turner because he represented a type of hero that Parker thinks we no longer see in the world today.

Also Read: 'Birth of a Nation's' Nate Parker to Receive Breakthrough Director Award at CinemaCon

“Usually, we learn about slavery through the context of endurance or resilience but never though resistance or determination,” Parker said at TheWrap’s interview studio at Sundance. “I was like, this guy is a hero. So often in our community, we don’t really have heroes unless they play basketball or play football. To have someone that had integrity, that fought for righteousness, that led something that he thought would create systemic change — the system was corrupt, the system was evil — I thought that was intriguing.”

“Birth of Nation” will debut in theaters for an awards-qualifying run on Oct. 7.

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21 Times Hollywood Tackled Race Issues (Photos)

Selma (2014) - David Oyelowo plays civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in a biopic that explores the civil rights leader's role in the 1965 Selma protests.
Harpo Films/ Plan B Entertainment
Dear White People (2014) - This biting satire follows four black college students making their way in "post-racial" America.
Homegrown Pictures
12 Years a Slave (2013) - Chiwetel Ejiofor led the 2014 Best Picture winner, which is a true story about a freeborn black man who spent over a decade in slavery in the pre-Civil War South.
Fox
Django Unchained (2012) - Quentin Tarantino's controversial Oscar winner follows a freed slave who fights to liberate his wife from a brutal plantation owner.
The Weinstein Co.
Gran Torino (2008) - Clint Eastwood plays a grizzled Korean War veteran who reluctantly takes his young Hmong neighbor under his wing.
Warner Bros.
Crash (2004) - 2006's Best Picture Winner traces the intersecting lives of people of different races in present day Los Angeles.
Bob Yari Productions
American History X (1998) - Edward Norton plays the leader of a violent neo-Nazi gang who reevaluates his life when he sees his little brother going down the same path.
New Line
A Time to Kill (1996) - Based on the best-selling John Grisham novel, Samuel L. Jackson plays a man on trial for murdering the two white supremacists who raped his daughter who turns to an untested lawyer played by Matthew McConaughey.
Warner Bros.
Schindler's List (1993) - Steven Spielberg's unflinching look at the Holocaust through the eyes of a man who saved thousands of Polish Jews.
Universal
Malcolm X (1992) - Spike Lee and Denzel Washington teamed up for the true story of the inflammatory Nation of Islam leader.
Warner Bros.
School Ties (1992) - Brendan Fraser led this all-star cast (which included Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) in which he played tbe only Jewish student at an exclusive 1950's prep school.
Paramount
Boyz n the Hood (1991) - John Singleton's hard-hitting look at life in South Central Los Angeles saw Cuba Gooding Jr. trying to avoid the pitfalls of life in the ghetto.
Columbia Pictures
Dances with Wolves (1990) - Kevin Costner won multiple Oscars for this tale of a Civil War soldier who comes to identify with an oppressed native tribe in the American West.
Orion Pictures
Do the Right Thing (1989) - Spike Lee's searing portrait of a day in the life of a mostly black Brooklyn neighborhood during an intense heat wave.
Universal
Mississippi Burning (1988) - The true story of the disappearance of three civil rights protesters in 1960's Mississippi and the FBI agents who investigated.
Orion Pictures
The Color Purple (1985) - Whoopi Goldberg was nominated for Best Actress in this story of a black woman at the turn of the century fighting for her place in society.
Amblin
Blazing Saddles (1974) - Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor collaborated on this hysterical look at a black sheriff taking charge of a frontier town.
Warner Bros.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) - Sidney Poitier stars in this groundbreaking film about a white woman who brings her black fiancee home to meet her parents.
Columbia Pictures
In the Heat of the Night (1967) - Sidney Poitier again challenged conventions when he portrayed a black detective investigating a murder in a rural Southern town.
United Artists
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) - Gregory Peck cemented his place in film history as Atticus Finch, a white lawyer defending a black man accused of rape, in the adaptation of Harper Lee's masterpiece.
Universal
Birth of a Nation (1915) - Considered the first true narrative film, it attracted widespread criticism for its portrayal of African Americans and its glorification of the KKK.
D.W. Griffith

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The film industry has never shied away from the controversial topic

Selma (2014) - David Oyelowo plays civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in a biopic that explores the civil rights leader's role in the 1965 Selma protests.

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