It’s about to make its world premiere at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, next week – Andrea Arnold’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic and only novel, Wuthering Heights, which features the first black Heathcliff in the many times the literary work has been adapted for both the big and small screens, played in this case by a young British actor by the name of James Howson.

By the way, the official synopsis for this adaptation reads: “A Yorkshire hill farmer on a visit to Liverpool finds a homeless boy on the streets. He takes him home to live as part of his family on the isolated Yorkshire moors where the boy forges an obsessive relationship with the farmer’s daughter.“

Not-so unlike the original novel’s plot.

We won’t be at Venice to see the full film, but I’m sure reviews will surface soon after its premiere next week.

Here’s your first look at the film, which is very much in director Arnold’s impressionist-realist style, captured with a wandering handheld camera (h/t The Playlist):