Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

Emotionally mesmerizing.

Portland Oregonian by Grant Butler

The film is all the more remarkable because its actors are untrained and their lines are improvised. Clearly, they've lived this.

Boxoffice Magazine by Wade Major

A timely and timeless look at the intersecting lives, fortunes and fates of Jews, Christians and Muslims in the fragile Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, Israel.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

A remarkable accomplishment, a swirling, choral sea of humanity that forces us to confront that a man who does terrible things can also be a loving father who gives his infant daughter a bath.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

One of the pleasures of Ajami, a tough and in many ways unsparing movie, is its deep immersion in the beats and melodies of everyday life in Jaffa and beyond.

Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov

Electrifying and decidedly downbeat slice of life and death in Ajami.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Joe Williams

Ajami is neither a puzzle nor a polemic. It's an admirably even-handed portrait of life in an occupied ghetto that is bounded by checkpoints. Everyone we meet is a more or less honorably motivated victim of circumstance. That the circumstances were inscribed centuries ago makes Ajami a tragedy of biblical proportions.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

It’s much too easy to call Ajami an Arab-Israeli “Crash,’’ but it’s a pretty good place to start.

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

Copti and Shani show characters of different backgrounds interacting peacefully as individuals, then show how those characters subtly change when their affiliation with a group becomes an issue. And always the threat of violence looms.

Village Voice

To the extent that its sympathies lie with the occupied and with those who must do the work of enforcing occupation, Ajami brings a warmly generous spirit to its subjects, almost all of whom become gangsters by default. No one is demonized or sanctified. The movie's sensibilities are humanistic.

Variety

Time shifts may overcomplicate the narrative for some, but the pay-off packs a major punch.

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

But don't worry if you miss some details; this is the kind of movie that rewards a second viewing.

The Hollywood Reporter

The main drawback to this noble effort, just nominated for the foreign-language Oscar, is that the two-hour film is unrelievedly grim and tense.

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

Ajami is Israel’s submission to the Oscars, and like the gritty "City of God" before it, it takes harrowing, tricky circumstances and illuminates them with Scorsesian snap.

Variety by Jay Weissberg

Time shifts may overcomplicate the narrative for some, but the pay-off packs a major punch.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

The complexity might require a second viewing, but there is compensation in the realistic acting by a cast of non-pros and the eye-grabbing, hand-held lensing by Boaz Yehonatan Yacov.