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Memory Box(دفاتر مايا)

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Lebanon, Canada, France · 2021
1h 40m
Director Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige
Starring Manal Issa, Rim Turki, Paloma Vauthier, Clémence Sabbagh
Genre Drama

On Christmas Eve, a mother and daughter in Montreal receive an unexpected delivery: notebooks, tapes, and photos from 1980s Beirut, Lebanon. While the mother refuses to open the box, her daughter dives into the memories of her mother's adolescence.

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What are critics saying?

70

Little White Lies by

Despite a prioritisation of visual effects over story, Memory Box makes a compelling case for chronicling the big and small parts of your life, if only to share with generations to come.

70

Screen Daily by Allan Hunter

As truths are shared, revelations uncovered and reunions achieved, Memory Box becomes a warming tale of truth and reconciliation.

80

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

Among other things, the film is an extremely dense fusion of elements that make up our sense of time and memories, including collages of hundreds of old photos, grainy super 8 footage, notebooks, songs and music, sound bites and newspaper articles.

80

Variety by Jay Weissberg

Through an ingenious blend of image and music, Memory Box opens channels that allow our own experience to empathetically blend with those of the characters in a mix of imagination and reality.

80

The Guardian by Leslie Felperin

Edited with minute attentiveness, the film switches back and forth between time periods adroitly in a way that always moves the story forward, while the outstanding performances from the whole ensemble, especially the watchful Vauthier and the fierce Issa, anchor the film.

67

The Film Stage by Orla Smith

Memory Box is at its strongest in its first half, when Alex steals objects from the box that she’s been forbidden to look at, and her imaginings about her mother’s youth are visualized on screen through mixed media animation.

80

The Observer (UK) by Simran Hans

Hadjithomas and Joreige thoughtfully explore trauma while remaining joyful, animating Maia’s photos, which fizz, crackle and dance to life on screen.

60

Empire by Sophie Monks Kaufman

The marriage of abstract existential themes, immersive, tactile images and dual timelines is always impressive but only occasionally moving.

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