RAMSAY DE GIVEPOOL-AFP
The Western "Rust" will get its world premiere on Wednesday at a Polish film festival, three years on from a shock on-set shooting that killed the cinematographer.
Hollywood A-lister Alec Baldwin was accused of violating basic gun safety rules in the 2021 death of Halyna Hutchins. Still, his involuntary manslaughter trial was dismissed over withheld evidence earlier this year.
The late cinematographer's mother, Olga Solovey, said Tuesday she refused to attend the festival for the film's promotion "especially now when there is still no justice for my daughter".
"Baldwin continues to increase my pain with his refusal to apologise to me and his refusal to take responsibility for her death," she said in a statement.
Director Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting, will introduce the movie at the Camerimage film festival, which is known for celebrating cinematography, in Torun, northern Poland.
"Almost three years after the tragic death of Halyna Hutchins, a Ukrainian cinematographer... Camerimage is set to honour her memory and remind the world of her legacy," the festival said before the premiere.
It added that the screening would fulfil "a dream of Halyna, who even during the early stages of Rust's production convinced... Souza that their work should be shown" at the festival.
Festival spokesman Roman Tondel told AFP that Bianca Cline, who took over as cinematographer, will also attend, but Baldwin will not be there.
The Emmy-winning actor was holding a revolver during a rehearsal on set in New Mexico when a live round was fired, fatally wounding 42-year-old Hutchins.
The shooting gave the film a sense of life imitating art, as the 19th-century budget Western is about an accidental killing.
The concept for "Rust" came from research Souza was doing on the youngest person ever to be hanged in the Old West.
Souza and Baldwin developed the idea into a script about an outlaw who rides to rescue his 13-year-old grandson from execution for an accident being treated as murder.
The film's armourer, Hannah Gutierrez, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for accidentally loading Baldwin's prop gun with a live round.
Baldwin's trial spectacularly collapsed in July when it emerged that prosecutors had not turned over a batch of bullets that detectives had found during their investigation.
The fatal incident halted filming, but it was completed last year on location in Montana.
According to her website, Hutchins was originally from Ukraine and grew up on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle "surrounded by reindeer and nuclear submarines."
After studying and working as a journalist in Ukraine and Europe, she joined the prestigious AFI Conservatory in Los Angeles in 2015.
Hutchins later made rapid progress through the ranks of Hollywood cinematographers.
She was named by American Cinematographer magazine as one of the industry's rising stars in 2019.
While the tragedy prompted some calls for banning firearms from sets altogether, Hollywood has generally preferred less radical measures.
Industry guidelines on firearm use were revised for the first time in 20 years last winter. Among other changes, they now specify that only an armourer can hand a weapon to an actor.
Prosecutors said Baldwin was handed the gun on set by the film's first assistant director, who later pled guilty to negligent use of a deadly weapon.
