BIRD Special Screenings

After a detour into documentary with COW (AFI FEST 2021), AFI Conservatory Alum Andrea Arnold (Class of 1991) returns to fiction with a dreamy social-realist drama that soars into the surreal. On the cusp of adulthood, 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) lives a hard-scrabble but free-range life in a North Kent squat with her deadbeat dad, Bug (a tattooed Barry Keoghan), and older brother, Hunter (Jason Buda). When Bug announces a surprise engagement to his girlfriend of three months, Bailey’s life is thrown into chaos – until a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger named Bird (a wonderfully idiosyncratic Franz Rogowski) sends her on a flight of fancy-filled adventure to help regain control. Keoghan delights as a slime-slinging, Coldplay-singing lad who, for all his faults, loves his kids with all his heart, while Adams impresses in her first onscreen role. Arnold’s buzzy Cannes debut is a crowd-pleasing, coming-of-age fable that is truly in touch with the natural world. –Josh Gardner