Watch Anson Mount and Jason Patric in the MK Ultra trailer

As the nation settled into the 1960s, the CIA conducted a series of clandestine experiments to test the effectiveness of mind control in a project known as MK Ultra. Based on the individuals at the forefront of these experiments, Cinedigm announced today that the psychological thriller MK Ultra, starring Anson Mount (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek Discovery, Hell on Wheels), Jason Patric (The Lost Boys) and Jen Richards (Her Story, Mrs. Fletcher, Clarice), will release in theaters, on demand and digital October 7.

In MK Ultra, a brilliant psychiatrist (Mount) unknowingly becomes entangled with a dangerous government entity. Set during the true and unconscionable CIA drug experimentations of the early 1960s, Ford Strauss finds his professional and ethical boundaries tested as he is recruited to run a subsect of the program in a rural Mississippi Mental Hospital. Under Project MK Ultra, the CIA ran an illegal human experimentation program intended to develop procedures and identify drugs such as LSD that could be used in interrogations to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.

Written and Directed by Ex-Intelligence Officer Joseph Sorrentino, the film examines the experiments the United States conducted on its own citizens. MK Ultra also stars Jaime Ray Newman (Dopesick, Little Fires Everywhere), Alon Aboutboul (Snowfall, The Dark Knight Rises) and David Jensen (Queen Sugar, Looper). MK Ultra was produced by Sorrentino, along with Lee Broda, Brian Mercer, Jerry Tankersley, Andreas Schilling and Seth Willenson with Sigurjon Sighvatsson, Suzy Bergner and Tom Rooker acting as Executive Producers.