Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

Raw and insistent, bold and brawling, Girlhood throbs with the global now, illustrating the ways an indifferent society boxes in the people who grow up in project-style boxes.

CineVue by Patrick Gamble

Girlhood's non-patronising and credible representation of class, race and gender is a rare and perceptive illustration of the intricacies of social inequality.

Variety by Peter Debruge

As in “Water Lilies” and “Tomboy” before this, Sciamma pushes past superficial anthropological study to deliver a vital, nonjudgmental character study.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

Where many filmmakers would have underlined the bleaker, harsher aspects, Girlhood presents the characters' grim reality without surrendering its lightness of touch, its compassion or its hope.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

Beautifully observed, precisely directed and acted with wonderful conviction, it pulls us into the life of its protagonist in a deeply involving way.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

The movie captures that heady adolescent sense of time stopping and the moment mattering while standing far enough back to let us acknowledge all the pitfalls Marieme is moving too fast to see.

The Playlist by Jessica Kiang

Girlhood is a fascinatingly layered, textured film that manages to be both a lament for sweetness lost and a celebration of wisdom and identity gained, often at the very same moment.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

The tense, involving result confirms Sciamma's mastery over the coming-of-age drama, a genre too often reduced to its simplest ingredients.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

Even as she stops at familiar stations on the road to maturity — problems at home and school, new friendships and first love — Ms. Sciamma revels in the risky, reckless exuberance of adolescence and in the sheer joy of filming it.

RogerEbert.com by Sheila O'Malley

A powerful and entertaining film about a gang of girls, and what friendship means, the protection it provides.

The A.V. Club by Jesse Hassenger

"Boyhood" has the natural endpoint of its lead growing into a young adult, while Girlhood stretches out in front of Marieme, an uncertain path into a haze.

New York Post by Sara Stewart

Girlhood veers between being a celebration of sisterhood (albeit an occasionally violent sort) and a chronicle of the cycle of poverty.

The Dissolve by Mike D'Angelo

Both Water Lilies and Tomboy explored similar material—fluctuating sexual/gender identity and adolescent heartbreak—but Sciamma’s touch is lighter and more nuanced in Girlhood, which refuses to pin any of its characters down, even in their vacillations.

Slant Magazine by James Lattimer

Girlhood is so keyed to the minutiae of its teenage protagonists' lives, it's as if the film can't stop itself from behaving like they do.