San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle

Maria By Callas finds lots of press footage that most of us have never seen, filmed interviews either for television or newsreels, and it’s all fascinating.

The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg

The movie is to Callas what last year’s “Jane” was to Jane Goodall: A documentary that revitalizes history through primary sources, to illuminating, at times enthralling effect.

Movie Nation by Roger Moore

She made her glittering life seem tragic, even as she denied her own right to feel sorry for herself thanks to everything her gift and her “destiny” gave her.

TheWrap by Dave White

As a document of a special creation, Maria by Callas is very nearly enough, thanks in no small part to that generous helping of footage where she fulfills that very destiny. It’s a powerful reminder that private walls can stay put when she’s singing Bellini’s “Casta diva,” that the music is more than enough, that we can let the mystery be.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

While Maria By Callas is short on facts and biographical detail, it expertly presents an emotional essence of this performer, leaving you both shaken and stirred by the extent of her gifts and the way they connected to both audiences and her tumultuous life.

Film Journal International by David Noh

Comprised entirely of the diva’s own words, whether filmed or transcribed from her various writings, letters and reminiscences, the film offers the definitive portrait of a woman who rose from obscurity in her native Queens, NY, born Greek, to become a true citizen of the world and queen of an art form.

Original-Cin by Liam Lacey

Assembled by first-time French director and Callas devotee Thomas Volf, this adoring clip reel has both pros and cons.

Washington Post by Ann Hornaday

In this immersive, often deliciously sensuous documentary portrait of the late opera star Maria Callas, viewers are treated to another rise-and-fall story of a great but tortured artist, this one punctuated by the occasional real-life bed of roses and pleasure cruise.

Boston Globe by Mark Feeney

Tom Volf’s distinctive and affecting documentary makes plain how much the persona also owed to appearance and intelligence and life history.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

No narrator, no talking heads feeding you insights, just the lady letting it rip on stage and off. What Volf, a French photographer now working on his third book about the acclaimed soprano, misses in perspective he gains in intimacy. His film fawns shamelessly and fumbles a few salient points, but it’s indisputably up close and personal.

Variety by Scott Tobias

First-time director Tom Volf plainly adores Callas — sometimes to a fault — but his film stands as a necessary corrective to decades of bad press. It’s an unalloyed tribute to her as a musical genius who gave all of herself to the public.

The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy

What is gratifying about the film is Volf's obvious love for and devotion to Callas, as well as his completist's urge to track down and include every scrap of footage at all relevant to telling her story and documenting her greatness.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Emily Yoshida

Perhaps the greatest gift of Maria by Callas that gives it an advantage over so many recent biographical music documentaries is how willing it is to let its subject just perform, uninterrupted.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

Entirely composed of archival newsreel footage, performance recordings, and rare interview excerpts from when the great “diva” sat down with journalist David Frost in 1970, the film unfolds like a second-hand sketch of a phantom who continues to haunt its director.

Slant Magazine by Derek Smith

The film is less hagiographic than most documentaries of its kind, which isn't to say that Tom Volf's adoration of his subject is ever in doubt.