Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang

Quo Vadis, Aida? re-creates history in the present tense, with a gut-clutching immediacy that Žbanić makes bearable through sheer formal restraint.

Variety by Jessica Kiang

This is not historical revisionism, if anything, Quo Vadis, Aida? works to un-revise history, re-centering the victims’ plight as the eye of a storm of evils — not only the massacre itself, but the broader evils of institutional failure and international indifference.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

There’s a real tragic power in this almost unbearably brutal and shocking movie from writer-director Jasmila Žbanić.

CineVue by Christopher Machell

As a fictionalised account of what was once described as the worst European genocide in the post-war period, Quo Vadis, Aida? is wrenching and vital in its bitter grief. As a study of political and diplomatic inertia in the face of contemporary global human tragedies, it could not be more urgent.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

The rigorous honesty of Quo Vadis, Aida? is harrowing, partly because it subverts many of the expectations that quietly attach themselves to movies about historical trauma. We often watch them not to be confronted with the cruelty of history, but to be comforted with redemptive tales of resistance, resilience and heroism.

The Playlist by Carlos Aguilar

Superbly executed, Quo Vadis, Aida? is a masterful high wire act of tension and devastating humanism.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

Quo Vadis, Aida? has the narrative beats and the intensity of a classic thriller: a cornered protagonist, an implacable villain, a breathless pace, hair’s-breadth escapes.

Original-Cin by Liam Lacey

Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić succeeds where many filmmakers fail in conveying the dimensions of a mass atrocity in a film that matches clear-eyed personal experience to history in a lightly fictionalized story.

IndieWire by Jude Dry

In Quo Vaids, Aida?, Žbanic lays bare the deeply human toll of violence and war.

The Film Stage by Jared Mobarak

Zbanic expertly wades through the scenario so that we aren’t taken for granted. Rather than show us what we know is happening, she includes foreshadowing, rumors, and expressions to put a chill in our spine instead. What’s more is her ability to weave in the reality that this fight concerns divisions on the lines of religion and race rather than pure geography.

Screen Daily by Lee Marshall

The energy and passion of Zbanic’s fresh, new, direct gaze at the conflict comes through in every frame.

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

The subject is horrifying but the screen is hard to look away from, as the situation becomes a powder keg of tension.

RogerEbert.com by Brian Tallerico

Jasmila Zbanic’s Quo Vadis, Aida? is a razor-sharp incrimination of failed foreign policies from around the world embedded in a deeply humanist and moving character study of the kind of person that these policies leave behind.

Empire by David Parkinson

This study in chaos and calculation not only makes for harrowingly compelling viewing, but it also exposes the apathy of an international community that simply turned the other way.

The Observer (UK) by Mark Kermode

Like the unblinking closeup that concludes the deeply moving (and ultimately redemptive?) epilogue to Quo Vadis, Aida?, Žbanić’s powerful and personal film keeps its eyes wide open.