The first trailer has emerged for the western Rust, the production that saw an on-set accident lead to the death of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

The film stars Alec Baldwin as an outlaw in 1880s Kansas who breaks his grandson out of jail after he accidentally kills a rancher who is sentenced to hang. It also stars Frances Fisher and Travis Fimmel.

It is described as “a heartfelt and emotional story forged in the struggles of the new frontier”.

Baldwin was charged with manslaughter after a prop gun killed Hutchins and injured the film’s writer-director Joel Souza. The case was dismissed last July for Baldwin but the armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed is serving an 18-month sentence for her role.

The film was later completed and premiered last November at the Camerimage cinematography festival in Torun, Poland. It is dedicated to Hutchins.

“We are here because we want to honour her,” Souza said at the premiere. “We want to showcase her work. We want it not to just disappear.”

Vulture’s Nick Newman called it “a work of salutary effect and simple pleasure saturated in morbid curiosity”.

Earlier this month a documentary was released on Hulu called Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna which looked back at both Hutchins and the accident. “She absolutely would have become a household name as a cinematographer,” the film’s director, Rachel Mason, said to the Guardian. “Anyone who knew her had absolutely no doubt she was going to be on the highest level, winning awards, becoming well-known for that.”

The film drew some criticism upon premiering for its focus on the death of Hutchins over her life and career. “I hoped it might have a little more Halyna in it or been a little more about Halyna,” Souza said.

Mason told the Guardian that the shift was inevitable with each new development. “As we were working on the film, the story kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” she said. “There was more news, there were trials, and there were things that I couldn’t have imagined when I first started. I just wanted to focus entirely on Halyna and her body of work, the people that she knew and she worked with, and not so much on Rust.”

Baldwin has since led a reality show on TLC that follows the life of himself and his family. The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan called it “a new low for television”.

The actor will next star in the Italian Christmas movie Kid Santa alongside his brother William. The film comes from the director of Sherlock Santa, Vote for Santa and The Good Witch of Christmas.

Rust will be released on 2 May in the US.