After last year’s fantastic The Florida Project, Willem Dafoe seems destined for Oscar gold. He achieved his third Academy Award nomination (following nods for Platoon and Shadow of the Vampire) playing Bobby Hicks, the manager of a Disney World-area motel in Kissimmee, Fla. who deals with the ins and outs of the drug addicts, prostitutes and children who live in his motel long-term. (See it. It’s phenomenal.) Now, Dafoe is taking on troubled artist Vincent van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate, which could potentially bring the actor back to the Dolby Theater come February.

“This is not a forensic biography, but rather scenes based on Vincent van Gogh’s letters,” reads a description of the film. The trailer doesn’t appear to be your standard biopic fare; the Diving Bell and the Butterfly director employs a wild exuberance with his camera work, alternating between closeups and disorienting frames while van Gogh struggles with the characters surrounding him. (And yes, the painter’s ear will be a major talking point.)

At Eternity’s Gate premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 3rd and is set to open wide here in the states on November 16. It features a wowing supporting cast that includes Mads Mikkelsen, Oscar Isaac, Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, and Rupert Friend. Check out the trailer below.

AT ETERNITY’S GATE – Official Trailer – HD (Willem Dafoe, Rupert Friend, Mads Mikkelsen)

Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate is a journey inside the world and mind of a person who, despite skepticism, ridicule and illness, created some of the world’s most beloved and stunning works of art.