17-year-old Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) is desperately seeking her father, who disappeared after using the family home as security for his bail. She meets a wall of silence and hostility from the neighbours, and risks everything to protect her younger siblings and sick mother. Set in the forests of the Ozark Mountains, a world that could not seem more remote, Granik finds great visual tableaux in the tradition of the American social photography of the 1930s, producing images and a narrative which document the poverty of this life rather than putting it on show. Newcomer Jennifer Lawrence is a revelation, bringing steel and grit to an original and unique heroine role.