70
Screen Daily by Demetrios Matheou
The downside to the film is Kossakovsky’s feeling that he had to include people in the mix.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
This is a purely sensationalistic cinematic experience that paradoxically encourages reflection and contemplation.
90
A feast of HD imagery so crisp as to be almost disorienting, this is immersive experiential cinema with no firm storytelling trajectory, though viewers can read what environmental warnings they may into its rushing spectacle.
90
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
The movie, like the elemental forces we continue to exacerbate, never explains itself. Surrender to it, though, and a narrative - of spectacle, conflict and retaliation - will eventually become clear.
90
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
A work of singular beauty and a significant technical achievement, the film makes water audible — the thumps and groans of calving glaciers sound like the planet coming apart — and almost palpable; heaving mountains of blue-black waves in an Atlantic storm convey stupendous mass and titanic energy as in no motion picture I’ve seen before.
75
Slant Magazine by Keith Watson
At heart, Victor Kossakovsky's Aquarela is a war film: a cacophonous survey of the global battle between man and water.
90
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
it’s an unexpectedly unnerving film that’s at least as terrifying as it is beautiful.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Leslie Felperin
Aquarela takes a deep dive into watery realms around the world, offering up an experience that can truly be described as immersive.
83
Aquarela is first and foremost a spectacle. When the Apocalyptica music is cranked up high, and the screen’s awash in dazzlingly sharp, hypnotically swirling images of cresting waves, viewers could certainly take a moment to contemplate the importance of water to our global ecosystem. Or they could just drink it in.
80
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
This eyepopper from Russian director-writer-cinematographer-editor Victor Kossakovsky (¡Vivan Las Antípodas!) is like nothing you’ve ever seen. His free-form documentary on water opens by scaring us to death.