Click here to listen to the interview (12:45)

Benh Zeitlin started life in New York City, but even as a kid, he felt the pull of New Orleans. When the time came to make his first film, a mystical short entitled GLORY AT SEA, no other location would do. Nor would working with any other community for both that film and his feature film debut, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD. When I spoke with him on June 5, 2012, the film had already bowled over the press and public at Cannes, and was creating a serious buzz in this country.

I started by asking him about the sound design of the opening sequence, in which heartbeats take center stage, and set the tone and the mood for a film that finds the universal in the particular, and the magical in the way a six-year-old sees the world.