Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

The film medium has often been discussed in academic terms as a vehicle to contain the passage of time. But “Three Minutes” does much more than that. Although it raises all sorts of issues about the nature of the film image and how it can affect us, it is also the least theoretical of movies. We are bearing witness.

Washington Post by Ann Hornaday

Three Minutes: A Lengthening unspools like a not-so-minor miracle. It’s a work of poetry, power and ruminative grace.

RogerEbert.com by Matt Zoller Seitz

Bianca Stigter's documentary Three Minutes: A Lengthening is a great film about filmmaking and a quietly devastating memorial for lives long gone.

The Playlist by Joe Blessing

A poetic meditation on film, history, and loss, Three Minutes – A Lengthening gives a glimpse into a lost world and then unpacks just how much can be learned from that brief fragment.

Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang

Three Minutes: A Lengthening is a snapshot, a memorial, a knotty philosophical detective story and a devastating account of Nazi atrocities. It’s also an extended rumination on the illusory, entropic nature of the cinematic medium itself.

Variety by Alissa Simon

Stigter’s method is simultaneously creative and forensic, but never sentimental. Working with a digitized copy that bears the blemishes left by the deterioration of the original celluloid, she conjures up exactly what she declares in the subtitle: a lengthening.

The Hollywood Reporter by Caryn James

An eloquent meditation on loss, memory and how film can shape them.

The New York Times by Beatrice Loayza

“Three Minutes” is more than a documentary about the Holocaust — it is an investigative drama, a meditation on the ethics of moving images and a ghost story about people who might be forgotten should we take those images for granted.

The Associated Press by Jocelyn Noveck

At the end, one feels gratitude not only for Stigter’s painstaking work, but to author Kurtz and of course his grandfather, just a man with a camera whose fleeting footage is a powerful response to those who intended to eradicate the existence of these people and millions like them.

Slashfilm by Chris Evangelista

Three Minutes – A Lengthening is not a ghost story, but it still feels haunting.

The A.V. Club by Jordan Hoffman

The imagery runs backward and forward, gets freeze-framed, goes through different filters, and is blown up, reduced, diced, and re-assembled like playing cards. But director Bianca Stigter fully commits to this formalist dare—and it pays off tremendously.

IndieWire by Nicholas Barber

It grips the attention from start to finish.

Movie Nation by Roger Moore

The impression “Three Minutes” leaves is that it’s more probing than moving, more of a mystery to be unraveled than an emotional journey into who and what were lost. It’s still quite worthwhile as history and as a meditation on tragedy and the nature of filmed memory.

The Film Stage by Dan Mecca

Too often do we take for granted the miraculousness of the moving image. Stigter’s creative extension and exploration of Kurtz’s film reminds us. What can we glean from three minutes of film shot in 1938? Plenty.

TheWrap by Elizabeth Weitzman

The truth is that even at 71 minutes much of this film feels padded, as though Stigter couldn’t let go of the subject but also wasn’t sure how to expand it further. Because Kurtz’s concept is so moving, however, the film retains much of the power he brought to his book.