'He Dreams of Giants': Terry Gilliam asks 'am I dying here?' in trailer for new 'Don Quixote' doc (exclusive)

Watch: The dramatic UK trailer for He Dreams of Giants, exclusively on Yahoo

In 2020, acclaimed filmmaker Terry Gilliam finally released The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in the UK after 29 years of trying. Starring Jonathan Pryce and Adam Driver, the film premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2018 before hitting UK cinemas early last year before the pandemic struck.

And now, in an exclusive new trailer for He Dreams of Giants – a warts and all behind-the-scenes documentary about the film, available digitally from 29 March – we see it was almost The Passion Project That Killed Terry Gilliam.

The trailer, above, shows Gilliam being treated by doctors with a voiceover from the Monty Python star explaining: "I was getting ready for bed and I just see blood is pouring out of my body. Am I dying here?

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"After all of this time on the film, and I die before I finish?"

His illness was later revealed to be the result of "a perforated medullary artery".

Described by BBC film critic Mark Kermode as "a real insight into the pain and ecstasy of the creative process", He Dreams of Giants charts Gilliam's final, successful attempt to complete his take on the classic Don Cervantes text.

After starting work on it in 1989, Gilliam first went into production on the film in 1998 with Johnny Depp and Jean Rochefort in the lead roles, but the production fell apart and was the subject of another famed documentary, Lost In La Mancha, released in 2002.

Directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe and produced by Lucy Darwin, the team behind Lost in La Mancha, He Dreams of Giants combines footage of Gilliam’s production with interviews and archival footage from the director’s entire career.

Blue Finch Film Releasing presents He Dreams of Giants on digital platforms 29 March, 2021.

WatchL Jonathan Pryce on the battle to make Don Quixote