Netflix’s purchase of the distribution rights for Beasts of No Nation was a definite gamechanger: although it wasn’t the first feature film acquired by a streaming site, it was the first really high-profile, awards-bait film that had been sold in this way, and signalled the streamers’ intent to move into areas that had hitherto been seen as the preserve of the cinema-only circuit.

Fears that Netflix would only show the film on its streaming service have so far been allayed, as it has been booked in for a world premiere at the Venice film festival before a US release in October – though its simultaneous availability on VoD means that major cinema chains will boycott it.

Now the trailer has been released, and audiences can have a first glimpse of what the fuss is about. Directed by Cary Fukunaga (of True Detective renown), and starring Idris Elba as a warlord in an unspecified African civil conflict, the trailer foregrounds the film’s central theme of the brutalisation of child soldiers: Elba, in the abbreviated scene, encourages a young boy (Abraham Attah) to kill a captured enemy soldier.

Beasts of No Nation is released on 16 October.