Meet the Adorable Star of a Katrina-Inspired Fable

The post-Katrina fable Beasts of the Southern Wild follows a young girl surviving in a bayou community cut off from the rest of the world, and its young star Quvenzhane Wallis is getting serious buzz for her honest, revelatory performance. Go behind the scenes of this unique indie film, in select theaters Wednesday.

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"She's very bright and very advanced for her age; we used to sit down and sometimes it felt like I was talking to a teenager," says co-star Dwight Henry. "She has a very, very bright future ahead of her."

Set in a poor backwoods Louisiana area nicknamed "The Bathtub," Beasts of the Southern Wild tracks the relationship between six-year-old Hushpuppy (Wallis) and her ailing father Wink (Henry), who doles out tough-love as they try to both survive and enjoy their day-to-day existence in their forgotten community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee.

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The film is as much about fantasy, imagination and fairy tales as it is about survival, raw courage and catastrophe...