BY PAULA SCHWARTZ

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The movie that ended the New Directors/New Film Series at Lincoln Center was kept under wraps until right before the lights went down Sunday evening. Earlier in the week, we had received an intriguing email inviting us to see a “surprise film that promised to be one of the most talked about films of the year!” (The theaters at Elinor Bunin and Walter Reade were packed.)

In the lobby of the theater we tried cajoling the ticket guy to give it up, until he finally hinted that the film was the big hit at Sundance. Enough said. We knew then it could only be “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which one festival critic after another had raved about. The film, which won the festival’s grand jury prize, was talked up so much it was like there was “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and then there were all the other movies at Sundance, none of which were in the same league. (The film is heading to theaters in June courtesy of Fox Searchlight.)

“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a magical realist fable, directed and co-written by Benh Zeitlin, focuses on the journey of a 6-year-old girl, Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), in a mythological and apocalyptical part of South Louisiana called the Bathtub. She lives at the edge of the world on water in dilapidated surroundings with her hard-living and hard-boozing father Wink (Dwight Henry), along with wandering dogs, pigs and chickens (some of which later turn up on the grill). She is also part of a community of hardscrabble kids and stumbling but lovable drunken adults. Hushpuppy is a revelation! She stares down rampaging creatures that resemble giant boars and decodes nature’s mysteries with voiceovers announcing, “The entire universe depends on everything fitting together just right.”