MIT Lecture Series Committee

March 15 & 16, 2013

Rated PG-13
93 minutes

view trailer

format: 35mm

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

2012 Academy Award Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Benh Zeitlin), Best Actress (Quvenzhané Wallis), Best Adapted Screenplay

A six-year-old girl from the southern Delta searches for her long-lost mother after her father falls ill and her world spins out of balance, in the film from director Benh Zeitlin that took home the Grand Jury Prize and Best Cinematography award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. A harsh but loving father, Wink swore that his beloved daughter Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) would be prepared for the day he was no longer able to look after her. Little did Wink realize that day would come sooner than anyone suspected, and when illness strikes him down, nature runs amuck. As the soaring temperatures melt ice caps and the sea levels swell, a race of prehistoric beasts named the aurochs emerge to reclaim the planet. Meanwhile, as the apocalypse unfolds, determined Hushpuppy bravely sets out on a mission to locate the mother she's never known. [www.allrovi.com]

Beasts of the Southern Wild is sheer poetry on screen: an explosion of joy in the midst of startling squalor and one of the most visceral, original films to come along in a while.
      -- Christy Lemire, Associated Press. Read this review.