42
Oscillating between personal documentary and a scattered historical record, Karl Marx City leaves dramatic tension and narrative threads by the wayside in favor of casting wide thematic webs.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
Karl Marx City, Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein’s unsettling new documentary, is a smart, highly personal addition to the growing syllabus of distressingly relevant cautionary political tales.
83
It’s a remarkable picture of inbound focus and outbound ambitions.
83
In its haphazard search for facts, it happens upon a great many truths about how we see each other, and the price we pay for looking too closely.
83
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Karl Marx City is at heart a psychological family drama—the story of a tightly knit household that outlived an oppressive society, only to find itself faced with a doubt about the past that amounts to an existential quandary.
75
Petra Epperlein's personal ties to the subject matter provides the documentary with a necessary anchor point.
80
Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang
Shot in evocative black and white, Karl Marx City is a sleek, absorbing detective story, a fascinating primer on mass surveillance in the pre-Snowden era, and a roving memoir of East German life.
50
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
As too often happens in nonfiction movies, their exploration of these concepts is undermined by ill-considered execution.
70
Epperlein offers Karl Marx City as her own act of painful transparency, an essential warning about what happens to societies when ordinary citizens are being watched.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Dalton
A key joy of Karl Marx City is its strong, arty aesthetic.