'Beasts of the Southern Wild' Trailer Hits the Web (Video)

Ben Richardson

After wowing audiences (and winning the Grand Jury Prize for Drama) at Sundance, Beasts of the Southern Wild is headed to theaters in June. To begin re-building the buzz that it earned at the Utah festival, the film has just released its first theatrical trailer from Fox Searchlight.

our editor recommends

Todd McCarthy's Sundance Wrap: Why the 'Beasts' Rule

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Co-written and directed by first time filmmaker Benh Zeitlin, the film features a poverty-ridden but culturally rich Bayou community near New Orleans. A young girl named Hushpuppy (played by non-professional actor Quvenzhané Wallis, is raised by her often drunk, absentee father -- but through the strength of her imagination and community, she sees the beauty in their natural surroundings. As the community falls apart due to levee destruction, Hushpuppy must make sense of her world and find a way to survive.

"Beasts unequivocally casts a spell, one that emanates from the strange world it inhabits and evokes, as well as from the extraordinarily sensitive and expressive way Zeitlin and his colleagues have rendered it," The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy wrote in his review. "The director...  assembled a sort of collective of artisans to collaborate on this feature, and what has come of it, in the way the exquisite images, fleet cutting,  exotic music, vivid naturescapes, native people and local language merge so seamlessly, is a movie that pulsates with the stuff of life. It’s very much an art piece, to be sure, but it feels like a genuine one that, while meditated, speaks fluently and truly for the place, people and culture it so indelibly depicts."

The film hits theaters on June 29.