CineVue by John Bleasdale

Wells’ debut is a frankly astonishing work which will leave a lasting impression.

TheWrap by Carlos Aguilar

That a director can summon such emotional maturity paired with grand narrative originality in her first outing, particularly working from a deeply personal standpoint, astounds. Wells, a forward-thinking artist, invites into a vortex of feelings and sensations that fully exploits the language of cinema for its gorgeously humanistic pursuit.

Time Out by Anna Bogutskaya

Aftersun flows like a fondly remembered memory that’s been replayed endlessly, as if trying to find an important detail that might explain what happened. The easy pace of Wells’s direction brings out the best in her central performers, and the chemistry between Mescal and Corio plays out effortlessly. The light moments between them are warm and the darker ones linger heavily

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

With remarkable confidence, [Wells] just lets her movie unspool naturally, like a haunting and deceptively simple short story. The details accumulate; the images reverberate; the unshowy gentleness of the central relationship inexorably deepens in importance.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

It’s hard to find a critical language to account for the delicacy and intimacy of this movie. This is partly because Wells, with the unaffected precision of a lyric poet, is very nearly reinventing the language of film, unlocking the medium’s often dormant potential to disclose inner worlds of consciousness and feeling.

The Associated Press by Lindsey Bahr

Young fathers, especially the single sort, don’t get a lot of love from the movies and “Aftersun” is partly an ode to that very specific, very sweet bond between father and pre-teen daughter that both kind of understand will change into something else soon.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

Somehow, Wells retains control of her unstable material, and the result, though intimate, guards its secrets well.

We Got This Covered by Martin Carr

By combining her nostalgic take on formative family holidays with an unflinching portrait of conflicting personal identity, Aftersun intentionally delivers an emotional sucker punch few will soon forget.

Collider by Chase Hutchinson

The way the visuals all dance across the screen in flashes of brilliance that strip away the barriers between form and feeling until they become one is nothing short of spectacular.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

A stunning debut that develops with the gradual poignancy of a Polaroid, Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun isn’t just an honest movie about the way that we remember the people we’ve lost — fragmented, elusive, nowhere and everywhere all at once — it’s also a heart-stopping act of remembering unto itself.

The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor

Aftersun is a beautiful film, albeit one with too many endings, brimming with inner life and creativity, and worthy of comparison to Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher and other debuts of that ilk.

Variety by Guy Lodge

Aftersun thus works elegantly as a kind of dual coming-of-age study, perfectly served by Mescal’s signature brand of softboi gentleness — here shown maturing and creasing into more hardened, troubled masculinity — and the vitality of Corio, whose deft, lovely performance braids both authentic exuberance and a girlishness that feels more performed, as if for the benefit of her dad.

The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden

Charlotte Wells’ sharp and tender Aftersun is the rare father-and-child drama that leaves you wondering who the dad will grow up to be.

The Telegraph by Tim Robey

The film has a beguiling looseness – it captures that familiar holiday feeling of good days and bad days, or moods turning for no particular reason, other than maybe spending a bit too long in each other’s company.

Screen Daily by Fionnuala Halligan

While attention, fairly, will go to the work’s visual and tonal acuity, Wells’ measured but relentless probing, her careful peeling away of the layers of this intimate piece, mark her out as one of the most promising new voices in British cinema in recent years.

The Playlist by Elena Lazic

Bold acrobatics in editing and ambitious creative choices feel all the more superfluous next to Mescal’s effortless charisma.