90
Ida unfolds partly as chamber play and partly as road movie, following the two women on a search for their dead beloveds' anonymous graves.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
Pawel Pawlikowski shows great empathy toward the idea of illusions as a way of attaining emotional stability in even the most brutal terrain.
75
Entertainment Weekly by Chris Nashawaty
With her brassy, determined aunt, Ida sets off to find answers and discovers life beyond the convent walls in this leisurely but satisfying journey.
88
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
Both actresses are extraordinary, but Kulesza — bitter, sarcastic and tragic — carries the movie’s soul.
83
If it does suffer slightly from an overall lack of urgency that will mean those looking for a more directly emotive experience may find it hard to engage with, the more patient viewer has rewards in store that are rich and rare indeed.
83
Portland Oregonian by Marc Mohan
Just as austere and demanding as you'd expect a black-and-white film about a Polish nun to be. Don't let that scare you, though.
80
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Every moment of Ida feels intensely personal. It is a small gem, tender and bleak, funny and sad, superbly photographed in luminous monochrome: a sort of neo-new wave movie with something of the classic Polish film school and something of Truffaut, but also deadpan flecks of Béla Tarr and Aki Kaurismäki.
60
It’s one thing to set up a striking black-and-white composition and quite another to draw people into it, and dialing things back as much as this film does risks losing the vast majority of viewers along the way, offering an intellectual exercise in lieu of an emotional experience to all but the most rarefied cineastes.
80
Ida’s piercing intimacy makes the deepest impression, but its vision is deceptively wide-reaching despite a scale that’s deliberately pared-down and small.
100
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
Frame by frame, Ida looks resplendently bleak, its stunning monochromes combining with the inevitable gloomy Polish weather and communist-era deprivations to create a harsh, unforgiving environment.
A quietly powerful film about the searching for meaning where there is an absence, both religious and personal. The deliberate framing of each shot makes every moment of the film feel intensely emotionally charged and cooly considered at the same time.