Fact-based drama about 1950s beat poet Allen Ginsberg's masterpiece, a three-part epic celebrating the counter-culture and attacking industrial society. The film combines the story of the poem's creation, a recreation of the obscenity trial that followed the first reading and an animated presentation of the groundbreaking verse itself. Starring James Franco and Todd Rotondi.

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.