Watch 12 Years of a Life Unfold in First Trailer for Richard Linklater's 'Boyhood'

The trick of Dazed and Confused director Richard Linklater's latest coming-of-age movie Boyhood is a real-life coming-of-age, in that his unique project was shot over a 12-year period to capture the actors as they grew up in real time.

Linklater cast Ellar Coltrane at age 6, shooting the family saga intermittently with co-stars Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette until Coltrane was 18. If you weren't lucky enough to catch it at Sundance in January, the trailer is your first good look, and even this minute-and-a-half sample of the moviemaking high-wire act is extraordinarily powerful, both visually and emotionally.

[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/boyhood.jpg" caption="Ellar Coltrane over three different stages of life from Richard Linklater's "Boyhood."" credit="YouTube" alt="boyhood"]

Who among us hasn't wondered what it would be like to capture and stitch together the moments of our own lives, from childhood to maturity, just to see what it might look like? Very much like this, we're guessing, and the result was one of the most highly praised efforts from an otherwise ho-hum 2014 festival in Park City, movies-wise.

Linklater is a master of tugging on heartstrings and pushing nostalgia buttons without getting too gooey -- Dazed, School of Rock, and the seminal Before Sunrise trilogy are shining examples -- and though he used the "shot over time" conceit for the Before movies, Boyhood is an immersive plunge into American life unlike anything before it.