The Playlist by Mark Asch

A gorgeous and grave anti-epic, Pacifiction proceeds in scenes that serve as pristine containers for Serra’s idiosyncratic style, slow and digressive, full of flabby jokes and windy talk. It’s like watching a tropical aquarium slowly fill with algae.

IndieWire by Christian Blauvelt

Pacifiction is not a vicarious experience of luxury; it is an experience of life. Set to its own tidal rhythm, it is one of the most beautiful and rigorously introspective movies of this or any year, a film that makes you deeply ponder the fate of humanity itself.

The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor

Pacifiction draws you in with its sense of mystery and surrealism and leaves you ultimately agog.

Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang

In scene after scene, Serra holds beauty and menace in a kind of uneasy equilibrium. He’s made a trouble-in-paradise movie where the trouble doesn’t overwhelm the paradise so much as poison it, at an almost imperceptible slow drip, from the inside.

Slant Magazine by Carson Lund

Pacifiction uses its thin narrative elements as a pretense to explore the texture of uncertainty, suspicion, and inaction.

Slant by Carson Lund

Pacifiction uses its thin narrative elements as a pretense to explore the texture of uncertainty, suspicion, and inaction.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

It suggests John le Carré by way of David Lynch — a feverish and haunting but also wry and meditative rumination on power, secrecy and the color of clouds over water at sunset.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

Albert Serra’s bizarre epic is a cheese-dream of French imperial tristesse, political paranoia and an apocalyptic despair. It is a nightmare that moves as slowly and confidently as a somnambulist, and its pace, length, and Serra’s beautiful widescreen panoramic framings – in which conventional drama is almost camouflaged or lost – may divide opinion. I can only say I was captivated by the film and its stealthy evocation of pure evil.

CineVue by Christopher Machell

Albert Serra’s latest is a hazy fever dream of post colonialist politics and ambition that in its final minutes lurches into apocalyptic mania.

Little White Lies by David Jenkins

Pacifiction is by far Serra’s most serious and sombre film to date, an epic of neutered power and human expendability – a death-knell for humanity rendered as a tropical daydream.

Time Out by Sophie Monks Kaufman

Two-and-a-half hours long, Pacifiction is a film of extremely long and naturalistic takes in which tiny details become hypnotic – whether it’s the refreshing drinks served at a meeting or the way a woman dances.

Variety by Guy Lodge

Pacifiction is a film in many ways about floating, through life and water and power, inviting the viewer to idly drift right along with it.

Screen Daily by Lee Marshall

For resilient audiences, it provides a truly original cinematic experience. ‘Cinematic’ is a key word: the film was lavishly shot using three 4K Canon Black Magic Pocket cameras and comes with a rich soundscape that pushes the oneiric envelope and takes certain scenes into paranoid-thriller genre territory.

Original Cin by Thom Ernst

Pacifiction is a movie to experience. In the end, it’s all an analogy between politics and nightclubs and the assumption (fiction?) of power and persuasion. But that’s my guess. Your guess is as good as mine. And to that effect, ours is as good a guess as even Serra is willing to offer.

The Hollywood Reporter by Leslie Felperin

Quite watchable, even sort of plot-driven — for a Serra film.

RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams

This isn’t a story, but an evocative collection of asked-and-answered prompts. You buy a ticket to Pacifiction and then you react, until the nudging stops.