The Seattle Times by Moira Macdonald

“Salvatore” is a pleasure for anyone who loves shoes and/or good movies.

The A.V. Club by Tomris Laffly

Guadagnino’s documentary is very much like walking through an immersive and interactive museum designed to make one feel nostalgic for a bygone era of art and craft. It’s magical stuff.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

“Shoemaker of Dreams” works as well as it does because Guadagnino fills each moment with such delight for his subject that it’s impossible not to end up consumed by that spell.

TheWrap by Dave White

Ferragamo’s story is a complex intersection, touching on early-20th-century immigration, youthful ambition, the dawn of Hollywood, passionate artistic hunger, tenacity, foot fascination and wild innovation.

Screen Daily by Allan Hunter

Luca Guadagnino’s lush documentary may be traditional in its use of talking head interviews and evocative archive footage, but it works a treat when the subject is this fascinating.

Original-Cin by Karen Gordon

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams is a study of a man who found his passion early in life and lived it with commitment.

Los Angeles Times by Carlos Aguilar

Even if he couldn’t summon the experience of walking in Ferragamo’s shoes and getting to know him deeply, Guadagnino makes one appreciate the shoemaker’s indelible footprints from afar.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

Thankfully, there’s more than enough fascinating material — as well as choice archival footage and photographs — to build a robust narrative.

The Associated Press by Jocelyn Noveck

Guadagnino gives us a lesson in the history of Hollywood itself, not to mention the birth of the “movie star” and the role fashion has played in that. (It’s great fun.)

Variety by Guy Lodge

The film is undeniably overlong, and far more engaging in its first half, which covers Ferragamo’s hard-up Neapolitan beginnings and lively career as a shoemaker to the stars in 1920s Tinseltown with a mixture of romantic evocation and chewy historical expertise.

Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene

The focus on Ferragamo’s craft, and the very structure of manufacture, is exciting, but the narrative’s tendency to embody the opposite of his innovativeness feels lazy and contradictory.

The New York Times by Natalia Winkelman

If Guadagnino sought to reflect the romance of Ferragamo’s red carpet creations, his storytelling is at once more conventional and more awkward in construction. Forget feet; defter hands might have helped.