Boston Globe by Patricia Smith

Sokurov’s elegy for Europe — and for art — is eloquent, sorrowful, and challenging.

Chicago Sun-Times by Richard Roeper

As Sokurov examines a pivotal point in the Louvre’s history and gives us a virtual tour of the magnificent museum, he makes larger points about the vital importance of art throughout human history. This is one of the most beautiful films of the year.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

Francofonia is a brilliant meditation on art, on war - and what happens to art when nations go to war.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

Sokurov is a playful philosopher. If his playfulness is sometimes juvenile – as in those Napoleon scenes, or, worse, in the scenes of an actress playing Marianne, the spirit of France, exhorting, “Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood” – at least he’s not stuffy.

Screen Daily

Aleksandr Sokurov’s Francofonia is rich, complex, challenging.

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

Skipping across ages and genres, this cine-essay beguilement from Russian Ark director Alexander Sokurov considers the Louvre — and the miracle of the transmission of art and culture across its history.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

The mood’s often as fun as it is funereal, and though the film occasionally feels clever in a way that isn’t necessarily a compliment, Sokurov’s ideas have a philosophical depth and richness that are found almost nowhere else in cinema.

Screen International

Aleksandr Sokurov’s Francofonia is rich, complex, challenging.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

Francofonia is a fascinating essay and meditation on art, history and humanity’s idea of itself.

CineVue by John Bleasdale

Francofonia is a chatty and occasionally brilliant rumination on art, history and death.

Screen Daily by Staff [Not Credited]

Aleksandr Sokurov’s Francofonia is rich, complex, challenging.

Empire by David Parkinson

Impossible to appreciate in a single sitting, this masterly piece of polemical filmmaking is as intoxicating as it is intriguing.

Slant Magazine by Sean Nam

For all its congratulatory spirit, the film has the persistent feeling of an elegy bidding adieu to a bygone time.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

When I first saw the movie, at a festival, it wavered on the brink of the precious. That changed on a second viewing. Most of Francofonia now seems tender, stirring, and imperilled.

Variety by Jay Weissberg

Does it all come together? Well, yes, if viewers think of the film as a freewheeling poetic essay, highly personal yet captivating.

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

The subject of Francofonia is art as the spoils of war, and the example he gives is the period when the Louvre – called at one point “the capital of the world” – came under Nazi control. Making the barest hint about the destruction of historic artworks in Syria at the hands of ISIS, Sokurov gently reminds the viewer why all this is terribly relevant today.

The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

Less fluid than "Russian Ark," Francofonia is even harder to pigeonhole, which is something of a feat.