Talking with Matt & Dwight

Q: Matt, as producer, you know they say 'children and animals,' tough to work with... and water, you had the trifecta -- plus a bunch of other stuff, in terms of this film. How was it for you?

Matt: It was tough, i mean, it was a tough shoot for everybody. We shot for 7 weeks and every day there was a different obstacle. From working with alligators one day, we were supposed to have a helicopter one day but when the oil spill happened on day one of our shoot, BP took all the boats and helicopters in the area so we didn't get to use that. So it was a real challenge but everybody there was giving it everything they had, from their heart, and when everybody around you is doing that, it makes it easy, and it was a pleasure.  I don't know if we could ever do a film like that again. It was a perfect storm of everything that was happening, and it was really great.

Dwight Henry & co-producer Matt Parker took the stage at Nashville's Belcourt Theatre to answer questions after two sold-out screenings of Beasts.

Beasting it at Guanajuato

We're thrilled to announce that Beasts of the Southern Wild won "Best International Debut Feature" award at the Guanajuato Film Festival!

Benh Zeitlin pictured center with the Guanajuato Film Festival's director, Sarah Hoch (L), and Jason Resnick (R).

Benh Zeitlin Mejor Opera Prima Internacional

Felicitaciones to the whole cast & crew!

Photographs by Karen Barajas and Paolo Vidales.

Beasts of the Ukrainian Wild (or: "Звери дикого Юга")

Q: How do you deal with hygiene in the movie?

A: [Quvenzhané] is very very clean in real life, so what we would do is we would give her this fake dirt, that we would put on her, but then we would throw her in the mud. But as long as there was fake dirt she would feel ok about it.

Since there was no formal Q+A after the midnight showing for our Ukrainian premiere, the entire audience poured into the theater lobby for continued applause and impromptu Q&A. In typical Beasts fashion, a volunteer scrambled to translate for Benh, audience members chimed in to dispute the Ukranian meaning of his answers, and (not recorded) Benh received two marriage proposals!

Meet Wink

"I'm not no actor, I'm a businessman."

Meet the baker with a big heart, Dwight Henry.

Glory At Sea

"A group of mourners and a man spat from the depths of Hades build a boat from the debris of New Orleans to rescue their lost loved ones trapped beneath the sea."

Director Benh Zeitlin's first film, Glory At Sea (2008), is a magical and mythic 25-minute short -- also shot in New Orleans by the Court 13 independent film-making army.