‘Confession’ Trailer: Ben Shapiro Wrote a Soviet Prison Drama Starring James Franco, Rob Lowe, and Nick Nolte for ‘The Painted Bird’ Director

Yes, him again. As previously reported, Ben Shapiro has gone arthouse. While the Daily Wire's pro-ICE thriller "Pawn Shop" keeps drawing protesters in Montana, the outlet has quietly finished its most prestigious project yet: "Confession," a Stalin-era interrogation drama that, believe it or not, was written by Shapiro and directed by Václav Marhoul, the Czech filmmaker behind 2019's brutal, divisive Venice title "The Painted Bird."

Now we have a first trailer, a first-look image, and a lot more detail, via Deadline.

The cast is the starriest the Daily Wire has ever assembled: Rob Lowe, James Franco, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Nick Nolte, Emile Hirsch, Dean Norris, Richard Brake, and Brad Dourif. Say what you will about the company, but that's an impressive lineup for a Daily Wire movie, and I'm sure most of them signed on because of Marhoul's involvement.

Set in Moscow in 1938, the film stars Lowe as Alexei, a disillusioned Russian former literature professor who is hauled into the notorious Lubyanka Prison and accused of conspiring with his dissident priest. His interrogator is Vladimir (Franco, also playing Russian), a brilliant and vicious former student. Alexei is forced to choose between betrayal and giving himself up to save others.

What's interesting is how far this is from Marhoul's last film. "The Painted Bird" was a three-hour, black-and-white odyssey across war-torn Eastern Europe. "Confession" is the opposite: a talky, single-location chamber piece. Marhoul admitted to Deadline that it was new territory for him, saying he and cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr. ("Die Hard with a Vengeance") worked to find a restrained visual approach that suited the material.

The film was shot entirely on 35mm at Santa Clarita Studios, just north of L.A., so this isn't a Moscow shoot, but the craft credits are legit, including production design by Vincent Reynaud and makeup and prosthetics by Oscar winner Jeff Dawn (’Terminator 2’).

"Confession" world premieres at the Warsaw Film Festival on Thursday. It will then get a one-night release in 100 U.S. theaters on November 11, the same day it hits Shapiro's DailyWire+ platform.

Is this the first Daily Wire movie that isn't culture-war bait? It's a Soviet show-trial drama from the director of "The Painted Bird," starring Franco and Lowe. Whether critics in Warsaw can separate the film from the man who wrote it is another question entirely.