The life of talented cinematographer Halyna Hutchins’ was tragically ended in a shocking on-set accident during the filming of Rust, a Joel Souza project starring Alec Baldwin. Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna, a documentary by Rachel Mason (An Update on Our Family), delves deep into the devastating incident and the story behind the headlines.
“Halyna was dear to me for many reasons. Not only was she a friend, she was a collaborator. While she was alive, I could never have imagined making a film about her. My hope was to make films with her, and to support her in all the many films that she was sure to make,” stated director Mason. “In the media frenzy which followed her death, it felt as if Halyna was erased, her loss eclipsed by the surrounding controversies. Our film aims to keep her at the center, while offering a portrait of the experience of those with whom she spent her final 12 days, which hopefully, through their efforts, offers the world a very much unfinished portrait of Halyna.”
The documentary will premiere on March 11, 2025 on Hulu.
Mason serves as a producer along with Julee Metz, Kate Barry, Jon Bardin, and Will Cohen for Story Syndicate. Anonymous Content’s Jessica Grimshaw, Nick Shumaker, and Jennifer Sears also produce. Matthew Hutchins and Story Syndicate’s Dan Cogan, Liz Garbus, and Tommy Coriale executive produce. Additional executive producers include Anonymous Content’s David Levine and Concordia Studio’s Lizzie Fox and Casey Meurer.
Hulu released this lengthy description of the documentary:
“In October 21, 2021, on the set of the movie Rust, a prop gun held by actor Alec Baldwin fired a live bullet, wounding the film’s director and killing its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. Within hours, the catastrophic accident was enveloped by a frenzy of media attention. For months, then years, as lawsuits flew and criminal trials unfolded, the tabloid spectacle around the case overshadowed a private, personal tragedy.
In Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna, Halyna’s friend, director Rachel Mason, goes beyond the public narrative to reveal the untold human story of that terrible day and all that followed — from the vantage point of the people at the center of the tragedy. The film weaves together the accounts of those who were on the set of RUST that day and of those, like Mason, who not only lost a cherished friend and colleague but who are still navigating the trauma of the aftermath.
Working with public court records, behind-the-scenes material from RUST, and unprecedented access to key individuals and materials, including Halyna’s personal archives, the film examines the official investigations into the safety protocols on set and explores the private moral reckoning of all involved. It probes for answers to the questions those closest to Halyna all carry. How could this have happened? And how do we possibly make sense of it?
Rigorously reported, emotionally raw, and deeply personal, the film seeks to redeem the core of the story that the media exploited — that of a talented cinematographer whose life story was minimized, yet in death gave her colleagues an unexpected opportunity to heal from unimaginable loss by completing the film that mattered deeply to her.”