Hushpuppy befriends giant wild beasts and sails boats made of cars! She’s a poet and an adventurer who can beat grown men in arm wrestles. She’s mini and totally badass and brave. Yes, yes, yes. This is what a superhero looks like. This is what a super movie looks like!

In this first feature film from writer/director Benh Zeitlin, Hushpuppy lives in the Bathtub, a vibrant bayou community which is beautiful and culturally rich but poverty stricken. With her solo father ailing and her community quickly being demolished by levee destruction, the six-year-old sets out on a quest to find her mother. Here’s our first look at her scary-magical journey:

Seriously. Beasts of the Southern Wild has everything: aurochs, fireworks, floating houses, crumbling glaciers. And just the poetry about the whole thing is the best; the grand scale and the colour and wonder of all of it. Plus I love how much this kid dominates; Hushpuppy, the character, and Quvenzhané Wallis the actress (pronounced Kwah-Vahn-Jah-Nay).

So, no offence to men made of steel, wielding giant hammers with godlike powers and indestructibility. But being invincible and doing brave stuff doesn’t make you a superhero. What makes you a hero is being human and kind of afraid, and doing brave and amazing things anyway.

Would you like to go and see this movie? Do you think the Auroch creature resembles a warthog?

In a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee, a six-year-old girl exists on the brink of orphanhood. Buoyed by her childish optimism and extraordinary imagination, she believes that the natural world is in balance with the universe until a fierce storm changes her reality. Desperate to repair the structure of her world in order to save her ailing father and sinking home, this tiny hero must learn to survive unstoppable catastrophes of epic proportions.

Directed by Benh Zeitlin and written by Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin. Starring Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry and Levy Easterly.

Winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for 2012, Beasts of the Southern Wild will be released in America on June 27, 2012 and while there’s no New Zealand date yet, let’s keep our fingers crossed for soon.