Opens Friday, July 13 thru Thursday, July 19
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Caméra d'Or (best first feature) at Cannes, this original and poetic paean to human resilience is set in The Bathtub, an endangered bayou community in southernmost Louisiana. Newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis is miraculous as Hushpuppy, a six-year-old force of nature who lives a hard knock life with her ailing father Wink (Dwight Henry) and their impoverished but spirited neighbors. Working with non-professional actors, filmmaker Benh Zeitlin creates a mythic world of sights and sounds from the little girl's perspective- achingly real and at the same time bursting with her precocious imagination. Both intimate in focus and epic in scope, Beasts of the Southern Wild might recall The Tree of Life, in that it's as much a head trip as a conventional narrative. Regardless, it's destined to be one of the most talked-about films of the year. Critic Todd McCarthy called it "everything American independent cinema aspires to be but seldom is," and in The New York Times Manohla Dargis cited it "among the best films to play Sundance in two decades." Rated PG-13. Camera: Ben Richardson. Writers: Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin. Director: Benh Zeitlin. (US 2012) 93 min.
