Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar, is breaking ground in the historical film genre with his upcoming film Oppenheimer starring Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, and Emily Blunt.

The film, currently slated for release in July, has a chilling new trailer that gives a larger sense of the movie’s scope, and the profound moral dilemma at the heart of the creation of the atomic bomb. J. Robert Oppenheimer was the theoretical physicist largely responsible for the develop of the bomb in World War II. The new trailer emphasizes the United States’ fierce “arms race” with Germany. In the trailer, Oppenheimer says, “We’re in a race against the Nazis. And I know what it means if the Nazis have a bomb.”

The trailer also reveals some of the intense anxiety surrounding the bomb itself. They honestly didn’t know whether detonation would end up igniting the atmosphere, leading to worldwide destruction. “I can perform this miracle,” said Oppenheimer. As history testifies, he did perform the “miracle,” accomplishing one of the greatest and most frightening technological feats in human history.