The Playlist

This is a documentary that reminds you of the resiliency of the human spirit. The resourcefulness that can take place when you have nowhere else to run.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

With up-close footage of police beatings and hordes of angry protestors calling for the country's president to resign, Winter on Fire features the intensity of an action movie and the fury of a clear-eyed polemic.

The Playlist by Ken Guidry

This is a documentary that reminds you of the resiliency of the human spirit. The resourcefulness that can take place when you have nowhere else to run.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

What Winter on Fire lacks in journalistic detachment it more than makes up for in fidelity to the feelings and motives of the participants. It’s more than just a portrait of terror, anger, desperation and resolve; it communicates those emotions directly, into the bloodstream and nervous system of the audience.

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

Winter on Fire's thrilling rebellion is neither the beginning nor the end, but it is at least a truly heartening middle.

TheWrap by Tricia Olszewski

The documentary is a testament to the human spirit, to unity in times of depravation, to the ability of common individuals to effect change at the highest level.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

Winter on Fire never takes its eye off the story's underlying and very dramatic theme, and that would be nothing less than revolution.

RogerEbert.com by Godfrey Cheshire

Though the film is limited by a point of view that’s too polemically reductive, the idealistic, difficult, sometimes lethal struggles it covers are undeniably revelatory and moving.

Slant Magazine by Oleg Ivanov

This is activist filmmaking that manages to be both angry and elegiac in its recounting of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan

Winter on Fire has all the immediacy and power of drama. If it lacks the dispassionate context of more balanced journalism, it makes up for it with a complex, contradictory emotional impact that is simultaneously demoralizing and hopeful.

Screen Daily by Dan Fainaru

More like the testimony of an enthusiastic, fully committed supporter watching, in close-up, a populatoon reclaiming its rights, Afineevsky’s film accepts as a basic premise that Yanukevych is the villain. Anyone who differs should look elsewhere.

Screen International by Dan Fainaru

More like the testimony of an enthusiastic, fully committed supporter watching, in close-up, a populatoon reclaiming its rights, Afineevsky’s film accepts as a basic premise that Yanukevych is the villain. Anyone who differs should look elsewhere.

The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Farber

Although the film might have benefited from a deeper investigation of the background to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the vivid scenes of protest in the capital city of Kiev supply undeniable power.

Variety by Jay Weissberg

Getting swept up in the immediate excitement is entirely understandable, but ignoring the less savory elements, such as ultra-nationalist rhetoric, is problematic at best.