Kid-Thing

On the outskirts of Austin, 10-year-old Annie tears around on her BMX bike, hurls dough at cars, and smashes things up with her baseball bat. Her father, a goat-farmer-cum-demolition-derby driver, does little parenting. Annie has no friends her age, so her daily routine is filled with solitary mischief. Playing in the woods one day, she hears a woman’s plaintive call for help from an abandoned well. Though Annie feels driven to visit the well daily, she is unsure about how to deal with the woman’s plight.

Brothers David and Nathan Zellner have made an exciting discovery in Sydney Aguirre, an extraordinary child actor who gives Annie a rich inner life. The Zellners return to the Festival with a carefully observed film that is both harsh and poignant, but one that retains their idiosyncratic humor—you will learn how to “blow a chicken’s mind.” Atmospheric and visually striking, Kid-Thing is a haunting fable that explores the choices an isolated child might make when left to her own morality-free devices. –Sundance Film Festival