“What happens when a man stands up and says enough is enough?” That’s the money quote in the first trailer for Ava DuVernay’s “Selma,” which focuses on a three-month stretch in 1965 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. organized a campaign to ensure equal voting rights for all men and women.

Before today, “Selma” stood as the last unknown quantity of awards season; now, with the new trailer and a forthcoming 30-minute preview of footage at the AFI Festival in Los Angeles, its a fresh contender on the block. David Oyelowo stars as King, but the cast for this one is big: Tom Wilkinson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Alessandro Nivola, Giovanni Ribisi, Common, Carmen Ejogo, Tessa Thompson, Andre Holland, Keith Stanfield, Wendell Pierce, Niecy Nash, Lorraine Toussaint Tim Roth and Oprah Winfrey, who also produced the film.

“She moved the waters like Moses: She held up her staff, and they parted, and we were able to go through and make the movie,” DuVernay told Yahoo about Winfrey. “She was a producer, and that’s working on financing, physical production, casting, permits, insurances — it gets really boring and unsexy at some point. But I’m able to say I’ve heard Oprah Winfrey on an insurance bond call. She did it all.”

Watch the “Selma” trailer above. “Selma” opens in New York and Los Angeles on Christmas Day; a nationwide bow is set for Jan. 9, 2015.