The New York Times by Dana Stevens
You come away from his film overwhelmed, hopeful and, perhaps paradoxically, illuminated.
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Iran · 2001
1h 24m
Director Abbas Kiarostami
Starring
Genre Documentary
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Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami documents his experience with resilient children left orphaned by the Ugandan Civil War and AIDS crisis. This film highlights both the universal nature playful nature of childhood, as well as the extreme adversity facing women and children in Uganda.
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
You come away from his film overwhelmed, hopeful and, perhaps paradoxically, illuminated.
The emphasis in this surprisingly cheerful film is on the resilience of the living.
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
The film is only superficially superficial, and it grows in meaning and resonance as it progresses.
Beyond giving a human face to Uganda's crises, Kiarostami attempts to capture the actual place, a swirl of contradictions as vibrant and beautiful as it is troubled.
It's a surprisingly uplifting experience, and in the end, unmistakably a Kiarostami film.
Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan
This slight but insinuating documentary by Abbas Kiarostami...will do nothing to advance or detract from the reputation of the acclaimed Iranian filmmaker.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Lovely, heart-stirring film.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
It's not enough for the film to show us a child's corpse wrapped in cardboard; we've got to step back to see Kiarostami himself shooting the sad sight, so that it becomes a Godardian ironic statement.
Kiarostami shoots Africa with an uncanny verisimilitude, coming close here to his idea of a "poetic cinema" indebted more to poetry and music than the theatrical novelistic storytelling tradition.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold
This documentary fails to grasp AIDS as a theme.
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