Beasts of the Southern Wild
1hr 33min.US 2012. Directed by Benh Zeitlin. With Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly.
As the ice-caps melt, and the waters slowly rise to threaten her bayou home in an area of Louisiana known as the Bathtub, Hushpuppy (an acclaimed debut from Quvenzhané Wallis) and her ailing father (Dwight Henry) struggle to survive against environmental breakdown and the emergence of strange prehistoric predators (the “aurochs“).
As Hushpuppy searches for the mother whom she has never met, Behn Zeitlin’s film, highly acclaimed at this year’s Sundance Festival, provides poetic and elegiac portrait of America after an unspecified catastrophe.