Bayard Rustin will get the long-awaited big-screen treatment many have hoped to see this year when Netflix releases “Rustin,” a brand new biopic starring Colman Domingo as the civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in Alabama’s history.

The film, which opens in select theaters Nov. 3 and begins streaming on Netflix Nov. 17, tells the story of Bayard Rustin, an openly gay Black civil rights leader who dedicated his life to a quest for racial equality. It finally has a trailer, which you can watch in the video above.

Colman Domingo (”Euphoria,” “If Beale Street Could Talk”) stars as the man many know as the driving force behind the 1963 March on Washington in the new film from DGA Award and three-time Tony Award-winning director George C. Wolfe (”Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”).

“Rustin,” which screened at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival in September, is already a hit with critics, currently holding a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 34 reviews.

“Domingo’s outsize performance gets across how he survived and succeeded through charm and sheer force of will,” writes David Sims of The Atlantic.

“Far from a stuffy history lesson, it’s a film that’s at once urgent, rousing, and alive,” raves Nick Schager of The Daily Beast.

Domingo is thought to be a contender for the best actor race at this year’s Academy Awards, competing against the likes of Cillian Murphy (”Oppenheimer”) and Leonardo DiCaprio (”Killers of the Flower Moon”).

“From the back rooms of power to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the new film tells the story of the civil rights movement from a never-before-seen perspective,” a Netflix press release said.

“Bayard Rustin was one of the greatest activists and organizers the world has ever known,” the release continued. “He challenged authority, never apologized for who he was, what he believed or who he desired. And he did not back down. He made history, and in turn, he was forgotten. Rustin shines a long overdue spotlight on the extraordinary man who, alongside giants like the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Ella Baker, dared to imagine a different world and inspired a movement in a march toward freedom.”

AL.com’s Roy S. Johnson counts Rustin among “the less-sung crafters of the civil rights movement.”

“Raised from his earliest days in Pennsylvania on the Quaker values of peace and non-violence, he’s credited with influencing a young preacher in Montgomery to pursue a strategy of non-violence in the pursuit of equality,” Johnson writes. “The young preacher, of course, was Dr. Martin Luther King. Rustin is also widely credited as the architect of the historic 1963 March on Washington, weaving together from behind the curtain the tenuous organizational elements needed to create the movement’s most impactful moments and images.”

Johnson also notes Rustin’s role in Birmingham that same year, when he “thrived amid the tension and terror that hung over the city that was ground zero for the Ku Klux Klan. He was a quiet, but essential force, behind King and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and the Children’s Crusade to end segregation in downtown stores.”

Rustin also wrote The Meaning of Birmingham, an essay originally published in The Liberation, which Johnson writes was a pacifist magazine that was the first to publish King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

The film features a star-studded cast playing historical figures, including Chris Rock as Roy Wilkins, Glynn Turman as A. Philip Randolph, Aml Ameen as Martin Luther King Jr., Gus Halper, CCH Pounder as Dr. Anna Hedgeman, Jeffrey Wright as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Audra McDonald as Ella Baker.

Wolfe previously directed the Oscar-nominated “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” about the famed singer from Alabama known as the “Mother of the Blues” (played in the film by Viola Davis).

“Rustin” will open in select theaters on Nov. 3 and begin streaming on Netflix Nov. 17. 2023, marking the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. Watch the trailer above.

More on Bayard Rustin

Roy S. Johnson: Black and gay, Bayard Rustin was a dual target yet essential to civil rights movement

The March on Washington’s 60th anniversary: Civil rights leaders look to revive spirit of 1963

Alabama’s black history runs deep, but some students skim the surface