The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

The panoramic intelligence of this film is a wonder.

LarsenOnFilm by Josh Larsen

You watch the film feeling as if life is precious—that every moment holds the chance for great wonder or great tragedy, even if, on most days, we live somewhere in between.

Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell reminds us that confusion is often a necessary first step toward enlightenment, and that bafflement and beauty often go hand in hand. This is a lesson that Thiên must learn as well. The gift of this movie is that it invites us to learn it alongside him.

The Playlist by Marya E. Gates

Winner of the Caméra d’Or for the best first feature film last month at the Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Pham Thien An’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is a deeply felt three-hour spiritual odyssey about grief in its many forms.

Screen Daily by Allan Hunter

This is a remarkable debut feature; provocative, absorbing and mysterious. There are no easy answers to the big existential questions, just a desire to seek them out with a kind heart and good intentions. In the end you just have to have faith.

The Daily Beast by Nick Schager

A three-hour drama whose slender story serves as the skeleton for a formally exquisite examination of loss, faith, family, and connection, it's the year’s first masterpiece.

The Film Stage by Leonardo Goi

This is, at its core, the story of a resurrection, spiritual and sensorial; at its most transcendental, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell makes Thien’s awakening your own.

Collider by Chase Hutchinson

Cinema as an art form is made infinitely richer via films like Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell. As we let it linger in our minds just as the camera does up until one final unbroken shot, you drift somewhere you've never been before and may never be again.

The New York Times by Alissa Wilkinson

Pham manages to float existential and spiritual questions into Thien’s consciousness and ours without trying to offer solutions, at least in language.

Variety by Guy Lodge

This is challenging but seductive art cinema that invites comparisons to such titans as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai Ming-liang and even Theo Angelopoulos, without feeling derivative of any.