As we taped our upcoming episode of Movie Mic yesterday, KTRK-TV reporter Don Nelson, our host, asked what movies from the summer surprised us and if we thought the season had yielded any likely Oscar winners.

I mentioned Beasts of the Southern Wild and Moonrise Kingdom as likely Oscar contenders, and I was surprised that one of the panelists hadn’t heard of Beasts of the Southern Wild.

It is amazing to me how many people don’t yet know about this movie. Oprah Winfrey, herself a big-time movie producer and actress, says she only learned of it recently. President Barack Obama asked her if she’d seen it when she sat down to interview him for O magazine. Since then, at least a dozen people talked glowingly with her about the movie, which Winfrey has since seen and – in typical fashion – now wants to tell the world about.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Winfrey enthuses in this video, which has the segment that will air on Super Soul Sunday on her OWN network. “Beasts of the Southern Wild is emotional, it is spiritual, it is magical realism brought to the screen. It is truly a work of art.”

The film, set in a forgotten Louisiana bayou community community during Hurricane Katrina, has been getting ecstatic reviews just like that since it premiered early this year at the Sundance Film Festival.

Official Synopsis: In a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee, a six-year-old girl exists on the brink of orphanhood. Buoyed by her childish optimism and extraordinary imagination, she believes that the natural world is in balance with the universe until a fierce storm changes her reality. Desperate to repair the structure of her world in order to save her ailing father and sinking home, this tiny hero must learn to survive unstoppable catastrophes of epic proportions.

I posted the trailer and some links for Beasts of the Southern Wild on Inside Movies back in June. I thought I’d also posted it here on MovieHouston, but I see now that my first mention of it on this site was last week. I posted a behind-the-scenes video about the movie on Aug. 16.

Beasts of the Southern Wild has been playing in Houston since June 27 and still is playing at the Landmark River Oaks.

You’ll find the trailer below. Here is a link to a story published about the movie in the New York Times in June. There are more clips and features on the movie’s official website.