RogerEbert.com by Matt Fagerholm

Regardless of their ultimate fate, the existence of Ye Haiyan and every soul she has ever sought to protect are undeniable, and thanks to filmmakers like Wang, immortal.

Village Voice by Diana Clarke

Wang's film allows the public activist to be privately human, showing Ye at home with her lively daughter, sharing moments of friendship with other women activists or clearing brush and describing the hard rural lives of her family.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Ming Wong

Gripping and thrilling, Nanfu Wang’s debut documentary is a raw look at women’s-rights activism in China.

The Seattle Times by Moira Macdonald

The searing documentary Hooligan Sparrow is a portrait of courage.

The Playlist by Katie Walsh

Hooligan Sparrow is a vital reminder of the importance of artistic and journalistic freedom, and that telling certain stories can be an inherently perilous proposition — especially when those stories reveal something that the government would rather keep under wraps.

The Hollywood Reporter by Duane Byrge

Throughout, Wang makes a virtue out of necessity: Her on-the-run scoping and jarring cuts infuse the film with a sense of desperate danger befitting its subject matter.

CineVue by Lucy Popescu

Hooligan Sparrow is a chilling reminder of the extent of state repression and corruption in China.

Los Angeles Times by Michael Rechtshaffen

Against considerable odds, Wang managed to smuggle the various media out of China and back to her New York base where she adroitly edited it into a quietly powerful first feature about the untapped potential for bearing witness in our social media-driven society.

Screen Daily by Wendy Ide

Wang’s film has a grass roots, on-the-ground urgency: nervy, paranoid camerawork gives a sense of the realities of life on the sharp edge of activism.

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

Hooligan Sparrow, which Ms. Wang also shot and skillfully edited, has the pulse of a mainstream thriller but without the pacifying polish and tidiness.

Screen International by Wendy Ide

Wang’s film has a grass roots, on-the-ground urgency: nervy, paranoid camerawork gives a sense of the realities of life on the sharp edge of activism.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

Hooligan Sparrow is held tight on the strength of the solidarity it finds between these women, and while many other movies have more powerfully exposed the corruption of contemporary China, few have so articulately confronted the gendered weight of these prejudices, and how women always seem to be the first citizens to have their wings clipped.

The Film Stage by Daniel Schindel

Hooligan Sparrow struggles with the entrenchment of injustice both thematically and narratively, as it can’t quite find a way to cohere its story beyond sticking to the time Wang was with Ye. But that doesn’t diminish the courage of either filmmaker or subject.

Slant Magazine by Christopher Gray

The Nanfu Wang film's noble aims are mirrored in its more frustrating and conventional qualities.