Cast

Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Dale Dickey, Kevin Breznahan, Lauren Sweetser

awards

Sundance FF 2010 – best picture, best screenplay, Berlin IFF 2010 – ‘Tagesspiegel’ reader’s prize, CICAE prize, Independent FF of Boston 2010 – special jury prize, audience award, San Francisco IFF 2010- audience award, Palm Beach IFF 2010 – best feature film, Seattle IFF 2010 – best director, best actress, Deauville American FF 2010 – jury prize

Film description

Laureate of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Debra Granik’s film is a trip into the muddy Ozark hinterland where outsiders dare not venture. Impoverished shacks strewn about the forest, taciturn locals wearing dirty cheerless faces, and constantly barking dogs wander around abandoned rusting cars set the scene for Ree, a no-nonsense teenager, hunting her crank-cooking daddy after she learns he put up the family house as bail and gone missing. Her search takes her into a dark and heartless world that lives by (of all things) a local code of honor.

Granik skillfully uses genre elements of films on growing up, small-town cinema and noir with special emphasis on realism. What sometimes seems like a documentary of Ozark poverty is deprived of its rustic charm and offers no social activism. Instead, we get characters of flesh and bone, excellently composed shots with cool stormy hues, and edge-of-your-seat emotions, combining into an engaging film from the bowels of America.

Grzegorz Kurek