Six-year-old Hushpuppy decides at the beginning of Beasts of the Southern Wild that the entire universe depends on ‘everything fitting together just right.’ The protagonist, played by the Oscar-tipped newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis, proves to be absolutely correct in her prediction. With the onset of dramatic climate change, the natural world around her is transformed, threatening the lives of the inhabitants in the close-knit community of the Bathtub deep in the American bayou.

Benh Zeitlin, who makes his directorial debut with the feature, uses little-known actors and the jerky angles of handheld cameras to convey the reality of life in a wild, forgotten wetland that is seemingly removed from the rest of American society. The Bathtub residents, along with Hushpuppy and her father Wink (Dwight Henry), live in ramshackle houses built on the water, where they rear livestock and do their best to survive amid the powerful weather patterns threatening to uproot them. Wink has raised his daughter to become independent and self-reliant so she can cope when he is no longer able to care for her. Although his tough parenting initially sparks rebellion, she soon learns the fine art of feistiness and catfish-catching under her father’s expert tutelage with her talents belying her relative inexperience. Wallis is adorable in the role of Hushpuppy, combining resourcefulness and wisdom with an irrepressible naughty streak that ensures her place in the audience’s hearts.

When Hushpuppy’s schoolteacher tells her class of an approaching apocalypse in a geography lesson, it is time for the heroine to put her survival skills in practice. Miss Bathsheba explains how melting ice caps cause water levels to rise, flooding the homes of the Bathtub’s population and reintroducing a prehistoric race of animals called aurochs. The aurochs symbolise the confusion of an ever-changing world, mirroring the events in Hushpuppy’s own life as she is forced to come to terms with leaving her home and her father's unidentified illness.

Although the combination of fantasy with a winsome narrator may seem like the hackneyed storyline of a typical Hollywood tearjerker, Zeitlin’s beguiling blend of eccentricity and artistry elevates the film to a noisy, colourful and sensory celebration of life in America’s southern states. He carefully steers the film away from insipidity and stereotyping, revealing his debt to directors such as Guillermo del Toro and Spike Jonze behind successes such as Pan’s Labyrinth and Where the Wild Things Are. The film’s synthesis of magical realism with its authentic portrayal of life in the Louisiana marshlands leaves the audience with an unforgettable and shocking snapshot of a close-knit community trying to adapt to the changing conditions of life around them.