‘Warfare’ Trailer: Alex Garland Co-Directs A24 Military Thriller About Navy SEALs Living with an Iraqi Family

Garland re-teams with Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL who served as military supervisor on "Civil War," to co-write and direct his latest project.

A year after turning a domestic political nightmare scenario into indie box office gold with “Civil War,” Alex Garland is re-teaming with a close collaborator for another military thriller.

Garland and Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL and Iraq War veteran who served as military supervisor for “Civil War,” co-write and direct “Warfare,” an upcoming A24 film that places Navy SEALs in Iraq in the spotlight. Per an official synopsis, the film “embeds audiences with a platoon of American Navy SEALs in the home of an Iraqi family, overwatching the movement of US forces through insurgent territory. A visceral, boots-on-the-ground story of modern warfare, told like never before: in real time and based on the memory of the people who lived it.”

“Warfare” stars: D’pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Taylor John Smith, Michael Gandolfini, Adain Bradley, Noah Centineo, Evan Holtzman, Henrique Zaga, Joseph Quinn, and Charles Melton.

Garland’s shift from directing on his own to working alongside Mendoza is part of a planned pivot to focus more on screenwriting. While promoting A24, Garland told The Guardian that he planned to indefinitely pause his directing career. In a later conversation with IndieWire, he clarified that he never meant for his comments to suggest that he was retiring. He used the opportunity to explain why he feels that non-directing roles deserve to be appreciated more when discussing the process of filmmaking.

“Just to go back to the statement, I said: I’m going to take a break from directing or I’m going to stop directing for the foreseeable future. That is such an uncontentious thing to say,” Garland said. “I also said what I’m going to do is screenwriting. Screenwriting is filmmaking. You can’t erase screenwriters or DOPs or editors or actors from the process of screenwriting. Filmmaking is not the preserve solely of directors.”

On the screenwriting front, Garland’s next project will be “28 Years Later.” The Cillian Murphy-led zombie sequel will serve as a conclusion to the trilogy that Garland and director Danny Boyle launched in 2002 with “28 Days Later,”

An A24 release, “Warfare” opens in theaters in 2025. Watch the trailer below.