The 2015 Sundance Film Festival is currently in full swing, with tonight marking the world premiere of the futuristic coming-of-age thriller Turbo Kid. If you aren't in Park City, Utah to check it out, Epic Pictures has just released the first trailer for the feature film debut of directors Anouk Whissell, François Simard and Yoann-Karl Whissell. The movie first began as a short film, as a contest entry for the horror anthology The ABCs of Death. While it eventually lost out to Lee Hardcastle's T is for Toilet, producer Ant Timpson asked the filmmakers if they would consider turning their story into a full-length feature.

The story is set in the ruined post-apocalyptic world of 1997, and follows an orphan known as The Kid (Munro Chambers), who survives on his own through a drought-ridden nuclear winter, traversing the Wasteland on his BMX, scavenging for scraps to trade for a scant supply of water. When his perpetually chipper, pink-haired new best friend Apple (Laurence Leboeuf) is kidnapped by a minion of evil overlord Zeus (Michael Ironside), the Kid summons the courage of his comic book hero and prepares to deliver turbocharged justice to Zeus, his buzzsaw-handed sidekick Skeletron, and their vicious masked army.

Bolstered by a pitch-perfect synth score, and clever and cheeky period details, co-directors Anouk Whissell, François Simard and Yoann-Karl Whissell create a raucous retro-futuristic action comedy that pays homage to '80s movies great and small, while adding their own flair with inventive and exuberant violence and gore (prepare for disemboweling by exercycle). Sci-fi legend Michael Ironside delivers with malevolence and glee as the larger-than-life Zeus, a despicable villain with joie de vivre. We'll keep you posted if Turbo Kid gets picked up for distribution at the Sundance Film Festival this week, but in the meantime, take a look at the first trailer.