80
A tough yet tender and beautifully crafted human drama that more than earns those Loach comparisons.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
For all its heart and strong performances, there's little new here. Still, the ending is perfect, triumphant and heartbreaking all at once, demonstrating that Quemada-Diez gets the reality of U.S. life.
80
Time Out London by Dave Calhoun
Director and co-writer Diego Quemada-Díez condenses many acute observations about life as an emigrant into a sure-footed, credible story.
80
Quemada-Díez filmed The Golden Dream chronologically using natural light and real locations, utilising Super 16 film to give his first feature a documentary shimmer. He also worked as a camera operator on Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams (2003), with whom he shares his penchant for opulent landscapes and narratives, and a sense of beauty amidst unforgiving reality.
80
You root for them as they bond, bicker and endure grim dangers – gangs, traffickers, police – but Quemada-Díez doesn’t play soft, and the stinging climax really sticks with you.
40
The Hollywood Reporter by Neil Young
The Golden Cage (La Jaula de oro) is a lukewarm examination of a hot-potato political issue.
91
The Playlist by Nikola Grozdanovic
It's a wonderful thing to experience a film unshackled from Hollywood conventionality and unburdened by the necessity for simplistic storytelling.
70
Though it takes some work to engage with the characters at first, the journey makes a powerful impact.
70
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
The movie exists in a space beyond arguments about immigration policy and border security, and while sometimes a little too willfully pokey, it speaks to something indelibly human about dreams and their costs.
80
Quemada-Díez thinks in images, and his film is too offhandedly credible in its details to feel like a thesis he’s trying to prove: it’s poetry, not prose.