Turbo Kid is a post-apocalyptic, BMX-powered, blood-splattered love story that follows the epic journey of an orphaned outcast reluctant to be a hero in the wasteland of an alternate future.

The film is directed by The RKSS (Road Kill Super Stars), a collective of three filmmakers: Anouk Whissell, Fran̤ois Simard, and Yoann-Karl Whissel. They co-write and co-direct all their films Рover twenty shorts in the last ten years, many winning awards at various international festivals, including Le Bagman, Total Fury, and Demonitron: The Sixth Dimension.

The RKSS also wrote and directed the short film T is for Turbo, which was originally made as a submission to The ABCs of Death contest. Although the film was not chosen for the first anthology, it won the People’s Choice Award for the contest. Inspired by the characters of the short film, Turbo Kid is their first feature film.

The nostalgic action-splatter flick made its world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and is part of the Midnighters program at this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival. I recently had a chance to sit down with Anouk Whissell, François Simard, and Yoann-Karl Whissell to talk about this insanely awesome ode to the “˜80s. Check out my interview below!

Turbo Kid
Directors: Anouk Whissell, François Simard, Yoann-Karl Whissell
Writers: Anouk Whissell, François Simard, Yoann-Karl Whissell
Cast: Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf, Michael Ironside, Aaron Jeffery, Edwin Wright, Romano Orzari, Tyler Hall, Jason Eisener
Epic Pictures Group | Timpson Films
Unrated | 89 Minutes
Release Date: March 17, 2005 (SXSW)

“This is the future. The world as we know it is gone. Acid rain has left the land barren and the water toxic. Scarred by endless wars, humanity struggles to survive in the ruins of the old world, frozen in an everlasting nuclear winter. This is the future. This is the year 1997.”

Turbo Kid is directed by The RKSS (Road Kill Super Stars), a collective of three filmmakers: Anouk Whissell, François Simard, and Yoann-Karl Whissel. In a post-apocalyptic future, The Kid (Munro Chambers), a young scavenger obsessed with comic books, must face his fears and become a hero when he meets a peculiar girl with cyan-colored hair named Apple (Laurence Leboeuf).

This is one of those moments where I am kicking myself for not being at the Sundance Film Festival, where the nostalgic action-splatter flick Turbo Kid made its world premiere. While there is no denying the quality and variety of films that are screened in Park City, UT, this time of year, watching the first trailer for Turbo Kid will certainly bring back some memories of classic 80s films, especially since its villain is played by Michael Ironside!

Set in a retro-futuristic, post-apocalyptic 1997, an orphan boy named The Kid (Munro Chambers, currently on TV’s Degrassi) uses his skills to find scraps to trade for water. When his pink-haired new best friend Apple is kidnapped by a minion of evil overlord Zeus, Kid travels across the winter wasteland on his BMX bike to save her.

Hit the jump to check out the first trailer from Epic Pictures.