If you’re at SXSW, check out the Canon Screening Room today, at 4:45 pm, for “KID-THING,” which did well at Sundance this year.
Synopsis:
In the outskirts of Austin, the days of 10 year-old Annie (newcomer Sydney Aguirre) are filled with solitary mischief. Annie has no friends her age; her father (Nathan Zellner), a goat farmer-cum-demolition derby driver, does little parenting. Playing in the woods one day, she hears a plaintive call for help from a woman (Oscar-nominated actress Susan Tyrell) in 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 for the seventh time, most recently with the acclaimed 2008 feature Goliath and last year’s irreverent short Sasquatch Birth Journal 2, with this carefully observed film that is both harsh and poignant, but one that retains their idiosyncratic humor. 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.
