NZIFF: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild
Director: Benth Zeitlin

And it begins. Beasts of the Southern Wild kicked off this years brilliant film festival line up and what a sensational cinematic entree.

Experienced through the eyes of 'Hushpuppy' (beautifully played by Quvenzhane Wallis), a motherless child who lives in dire poverty with her alcoholic father in the waste of swamp and marshlands south of the levees that failed New Orleans. The film is a mix of post global warming flooded apocalypse and the attempt by a child's imagination to understand the difficult world around her.

Combine a childlike wonder to dynamite stuffed pike fish, unthawed cannibal prehistoric giant boars and a fierce sense of pagan individualism and you have cinema at it's finest.

It is gloriously shot, it is tragically sad, it hurts, it's mesmerizing. In a mere 95 minutes you have your perspective forever changed.

You can't ask any more than that from a film. Brilliant selection from the very hard working NZIFF crew. It screens again 4pm Thursday 26th. Don't miss it.

5 stars

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