The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

A late narrative gambit made me worry that Hansen-Løve was pushing her conceit a little too far into the realm of the meta, but it pays off with thrilling clarity and elegance.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Chandler Levack

While the film first regales us in sightseeing tours of the scenic Faro Island, the film ends in an unexpected wallop of heartbreak as Chris begins to describe the film-within-a-film she’s writing in her notebook to her unattentive partner.

Vanity Fair by Richard Lawson

The gap between fact and fiction is where Bergman Island finds its murmuring potency. Its maybe unanswerable questions of self and creation give Hansen-Løve’s finespun film a sneaking weight. Perhaps one point of art is the guessing.

San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson

One of the most playful films about cinema in recent memory, and even with its angst, is more joyful than any film Bergman made on the island.

Little White Lies by Lillian Crawford

Rather than an attempt at directorial mimicry, Bergman Island is a unique vision from one of the greatest directors working today.

Paste Magazine by Aurora Amidon

What begins as a straightforward story of two artists creating different projects ultimately turns into Hansen-Løve’s strongest argument for the inextricable nature of life and art yet.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

Bergman Island is a heart-stoppingly poignant stunner all the same — one beating inside a body of work that has always been seasick with the bittersweet vertigo that comes from looking at the past through the smudged lens of memory and imagination.

The Hollywood Reporter by Jon Frosch

Delicate, droll and imbued with a haunting, understated wistfulness, Bergman Island wears its layers so lightly it may take you a while to notice just how much it’s got going on.

Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang

Even Hansen-Løve’s characteristically light, unassuming touch feels like a playful rejoinder to the weight of the Bergman mystique, a refusal to let him dictate the terms of the argument.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

It’s a movie that isn’t quite sure whether it wants to be one, or which one it wants to be. Which makes it feel like more than just a movie.

Time Out by Phil de Semlyen

Although the story isn’t autobiographical, there’s a tang of lived experience here – of very personal feelings and important questions being channelled through these characters – that keeps its sunlit landscapes and island interactions ground with relatability.

Variety by Owen Gleiberman

If Bergman Island is a roman à clef about Mia Hansen-Løve and Olivier Assayas, it’s an oblique one. If it’s a “Before” film, it’s one that embeds a crucial element of emotional exploration in the educated guesswork of the audience. If it’s a cinephile shell game made with disarmingly clever sincerity — and I would say that’s just what it is — it’s one that leaves you grateful to have paid a visit to this island.

The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor

Hansen-Løve’s cinema has reached higher ceilings than this, but it is a restorative sojourn just the same.

Slant Magazine by Pat Brown

The film never sacrifices its ambiguity as it brings various threads about ghosts, relationships, art, and gender to a head.

TheWrap by Ben Croll

Perhaps it’s a way for Hansen-Løve to show the way artists pick from their own lives, or maybe it’s a way to muddy the meta waters even more. That ambiguity does not always work to the benefit of a film that always teeters on the brink of self-indulgence, mind you.

Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney

It’s a film made with honesty, integrity and a certain grace, but it can’t quite overcome an earnestness that was never a problem in Hansen-Love’s best films, which carried their literary and cinematic inspirations lightly.

The Playlist by Jessica Kiang

This is an auto-auto-auto-fiction that throws out the occasional fun, cinephiliac in-joke, and teases the odd insight into creative blockage and romantic unfulfillment. But mostly, it serves to prove the old adage that a self-deprecating awareness that your movie has nothing going on in it is no substitute for having something going on in your movie.