The New York Times by A.O. Scott

What the film makes clear, with unfailing sensitivity and wry humor, is that for Shira and her family the ordinary arrangements of living are freighted with moral and spiritual significance.

Village Voice by Diana Clarke

Burshtein's lush visual sensibility, and the subtle performances of the excellent cast, create an aching portrayal of longing and interdependence that transcends the boundaries of the family's small world.

The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd

Burshtein shoots in extreme shallow focus, framing her actors against a sometimes-blinding blanket of white fuzz. It’s a decision that, coupled with Yitzhak Azulay’s stirring, chant-driven score, lends each conversation a near religious aura.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

Implicit in this film is a simple truth: The sheer force of artistry has the power to convert outsiders into insiders. I left Fill the Void feeling privileged, however briefly, to have been brought into this world.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

A transfixing, emotionally complex Israeli drama.

Boston Globe by Peter Keough

Burshtein has achieved a gripping film without victims or villains, an ambiguous tragedy drawing on universal themes of love and loss, self-sacrifice and self-preservation.

Chicago Sun-Times by Nell Minow

A sympathetic, lay­­ered portrayal, rich with detail, that earns its more complex and resonant conclusion.

Washington Post by Stephanie Merry

The movie confounds at times with its aversion to clearly explaining each relationship and ritual, but ultimately that makes each realization seem more like a new discovery.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Carrie Rickey

Burshtein keeps the camera tight on the faces of her actors in a way that succeeds at making visible the invisible heat between the characters. The film's chaste eroticism and the community's deep respect for Shira's emotional and spiritual growth keep the audience in thrall.

NPR by Ella Taylor

Burshtein refuses to engage with the culture wars that flare fiercely between secular and religious types in Israel; in fact she's trying to avoid types of any kind, which may be why secular audiences and critics have embraced her rapturous depiction of a community living its life, more separate from than at odds with the society beyond.

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

The film isn’t exactly rousing in its conclusion, but it’s always respectful: a serious ethical inquiry into matters of women’s choice, both imposed and seized upon. Check it out.

Slant Magazine by Andrew Schenker

The film unfolds in unhurried dramatic terms that come to take on an almost fatalistic force.

Film.com by Jordan Hoffman

Fill the Void is, in the worst sense of the word, a “women’s picture,” in which people wring their hands and worry, wail and weep over marriage and maintaining the status quo.

New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme

Trouble is, while the social milieu is nicely realized, other parts of the drama are not. Too often Burshtein cuts off a scene prematurely, darting away just as the crucial moment of emotion or confrontation appears.

The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton

Burshtein has devoted most of the last 20 years teaching and making film in that world, but here makes her international feature debut with a curious comedy-drama that has its strengths, but ultimately proves somewhat disappointing.