‘Rust’ Western Will Premiere in Europe 3 Years After Fatal Shooting

After the Alec Baldwin movie turned into the scene of a tragedy with the death of its cinematographer, the film will debut next month at a festival that celebrates cinematography.

The movie “Rust,” which has become synonymous with the fatal shooting of its cinematographer on set in 2021, will be screened publicly for the first time in November at a film festival in Poland devoted to cinematography.

The festival, Camerimage, said on its website that the premiere would honor Halyna Hutchins, the 42-year-old cinematographer who was killed on Oct. 21, 2021, when the movie’s star, Alec Baldwin, was positioning an old-fashioned revolver for the camera and it discharged a live bullet.

Ms. Hutchins’s husband, Matthew Hutchins, and their son, who was 9 years old when she died, will benefit financially from the movie’s release under the terms of a settlement agreement in a wrongful-death lawsuit. Filming resumed in 2023 with no real weapons, and the writer and director of “Rust,” Joel Souza, who was injured in the shooting, returned to see the movie through to the end.

“Rust” is a western about an orphaned 13-year-old boy who, after accidentally shooting a rancher, escapes a death sentence with his outlaw grandfather, played by Mr. Baldwin. The finished movie, which was initially filmed outside Santa Fe, N.M., and finished in Montana, does not include the scene that Ms. Hutchins was working on when she was killed.

The decision to finish the movie was somewhat controversial in the film industry, as the production restarted during the prosecutions of Mr. Baldwin and the movie’s original armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.

Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who loaded the gun with a live round before it went off, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison. A judge dismissed the manslaughter case against Mr. Baldwin during his trial in July, citing the prosecution’s withholding of evidence.

The movie was not able to find traction at the most well-known film festivals, but Camerimage, with its focus on cinematography, has embraced it. The festival said the premiere, in Torun, Poland, would include a panel discussion with Mr. Souza; Bianca Cline, the cinematographer who took over after Ms. Hutchins’s death; and Stephen Lighthill, Ms. Hutchins’s mentor from her time at the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles.

“We knew that our event was important to her, and that she felt at home among cinematographers from all over the world, who have been gathering at Camerimage for over 30 years,” Marek Zydowicz, the festival’s director, said in a statement.

The festival runs from Nov. 16 to 23.

In addition to the criminal prosecutions, the fatal shooting led to a series of civil suits and a widespread reassessment in Hollywood of the use of real guns and ammunition on film and television sets.

An up-and-coming cinematographer from Ukraine, Ms. Hutchins had drawn Mr. Souza’s attention when he saw a trailer for a superhero film she had worked on called “Archenemy.” Impressed by her camera movement and subtle style, he thought of her when it came time to hire for “Rust,” which he and Mr. Baldwin worked on together from the beginning.

In an interview before the festival’s announcement, Mr. Souza said that he had initially declined to return as the movie’s director after the fatal shooting, but that he warmed to the idea when he learned that Ms. Hutchins’s husband wanted the film to be completed so her final work would be seen by the public. Mr. Hutchins ended up stepping in as an executive producer of the $8 million film as part of the settlement agreement.

“It became very important to me to finish that on her behalf,” Mr. Souza said. “I would never presume to want to speak for somebody who can’t speak for themselves anymore, but I feel pretty damn confident that’s what she would have wanted.”

At the time of the fatal shooting, “Rust” was almost halfway through filming. The goal of the revived production became salvaging as much original footage from Ms. Hutchins as possible — a goal that became more difficult when a couple of key actors did not return.

Mr. Souza said he and Ms. Cline, the new cinematographer, put together a puzzle of old and new footage by employing editing tricks and, in a few instances, special effects that replaced actors’ heads. The completed film has a run time of more than two hours, Mr. Souza said, and about a third of the footage is by Ms. Hutchins.

Mr. Souza acknowledged that some in the film industry and in the public have taken issue with the decision to finish the movie, noting that union opposition had presented a major hurdle. But he emphasized that the central goal was to preserve Ms. Hutchins’s work and benefit her family.

“No one came into this second go-round just for a paycheck,” he said. “These are people who felt very strongly about wanting to carry Halyna’s vision across the finish line.”

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