For most people, the idea of making it in Hollywood today involves a ton of backdoor wheeling and dealing, some backstabbing, and an endless fight to step on others to get to the top. Benh Zeitlin has taken the opposite approach.

Cheap, amateurish and sometimes just plain hard to watch, Beasts enjoyed a wave of overwrought critical hosannas, going all the way back to when the film first was shown more than a year ago at the Sundance Film Festival.

Host Mike Birbiglia kept the awards ceremony moving briskly with presenters: and many more. Career tributes went to Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, David O. Russell, and Jeff Skoll, the Participant Media founder and butt of billionaire jokes.

LOS ANGELES -- The independent-film hit "Beasts of the Southern Wild" will be ineligible for the Screen Actors Guild Awards because it was not made un...

NEW ORLEANS — "Beasts of the Southern Wild" director Benh Zeitlin is working on his next film – a Louisiana-made fable about a hidden ecos...

A raw look at reality collides with a touch of fantasy in Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar's Beasts of the Southern Wild.

The Beasts of the Southern Wild is easily one of the best films of 2012. It is the kind of intimate experience that ennobles independent film-making and it is a genuine piece of must-see cinema.

"Beasts of the Southern Wild" was beloved upon its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January. "Visually stunning and boldly unorthodox, 'Beast...