78
If you’ve ever missed a beloved grandparent, the beautiful What We Leave Behind will hit home.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
What We Leave Behind is about generations passing on their hard-earned wisdom. It offers an insider’s glimpse into our neighbor’s culture. Some may find its lack of emotional peaks – save for, perhaps, the ending – exasperating, while others may regard it as a well-edited and shot home movie. But look a little deeper. There’s real poetry here.
100
Sosa, who shared cinematography duties with two other women, Judy Phu and Monica Wise, depicts a world of humble beauty, of sunrises and dogs and chickens and weed-strewn lots. With a measured pacing (the film was edited by co-writer Isidore Bethel), she has created a film that is more like an elegy than a simple chronicle of events.
90
The New York Times by Lisa Kennedy
What We Leave Behind insists upon power in stillness, and the poignancy in staying — and leaving.
90
The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden
Inviting us to sit a while in this world of tradition, What We Leave Behind offers a vision of a good death as well as one of a good life. The time will go by quickly enough, and they both matter.