The Film Stage by Ryan Swen

Simon explores the extent to which both student and juror care about film, the occasional myopia when it comes to certain advisable standards of political correctness, and the casual way in which some hilariously denigrating remarks can be made.

The Observer (UK) by Simran Hans

Simon’s fly-on-the-wall mode is a distancing tool, but shouldn’t be confused with ambivalence. Exposing the mechanics of decision-making is an implicit reproof of increasing conservatism, both of La Fémis itself and the film-makers they are producing.

The New Yorker by Richard Brody

Seeing, in Simon’s documentary, the directing candidates forced to analyze a scene, submit a dossier, step on a set and direct a dictated scene, is like watching the training of hired hands rather than original artists—people better suited to writing grant applications than scripts, better suited to following orders than creating new worlds, to playing the urbane part of a director in meetings and interviews than actually being one.

The New York Times by Glenn Kenny

The movie’s most provocative aspect is its near-methodical portrayal of hive-mind thinking pursued as a kind of norm — not just by the examiners, but the hopeful applicants.

Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang

If the process of passing judgment at all fascinates you (and perhaps it goes without saying that it would fascinate a critic), it’s hard to resist The Competition’s extensive breakdown of how one weighs the merits of artistic goals and visions that tend to elude the usual scoring mechanisms.

Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene

Claire Simon knows that the best way to capture the anxiousness of a moment is to leave it unembellished.

The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer

In the end, it’s hard to tell whether Simon is actually critical of her establishment’s methods or whether she fully embraces them, although she is clearly compassionate toward the applicants and offers a reasonable payoff when we finally learn who made the cut.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

What The Competition considers a deliciously exciting rite of passage, viewers might interpret as a kind of cultural rot. The truth likely falls somewhere in between, as Simone’s documentary is too gripping to be dismissed, and too queasy to be accepted.

The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

Though The Competition lacks critical distance, what it offers, in spades, is the engrossing experience of watching other people endure pressure and humiliation — a thrill not unlike that of addictive reality TV, though one presumes that everyone involved would retch at the comparison.

The Guardian by Leslie Felperin

It’s clear that they want to run it as meritocratically as possible, but what’s interesting is how the criteria for what talent is and who gets to judge it come up for debate.

The Playlist by Oktay Ege Kozak

Unfocused and unpolished, “Le Concours” might’ve been fared better if one of the prospective students picked up the camera instead.