40
Slightly mesmerizing performances from Larry and young Shnaidman just manage to sustain interest in this quiet story. Even if it’s going nowhere.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
90
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
The Kindergarten Teacher — the film as well as the character — yearns for different values, for intensity, beauty and meaning. Its sobering lesson is that the search for those things is most likely to end in madness, confusion and violence.
80
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Bilge Ebiri
Lapid’s thrilling use of the camera, the way his unbalanced frame and his imaginative staging work with the precision of his story, results in something new and genuinely unnerving.
75
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
The film's denouement is at once shocking and organic because it echoes a well-paced but nasty children's fable.
50
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
Israeli director Nadav Lapid uses a well-worn concept — a lonely little boy is taken under a teacher’s wing — to create a slow, creepy movie.
70
Always engrossing but also perplexing and offering little deeper than the obvious, “Teacher” still reps a new development in a striking, idiosyncratic director.
80
The Guardian by Jordan Hoffman
One of the most fascinating, if inscrutable films of the year.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
Lapid’s approach is so cautious yet so ambitious, he manages to weave an engrossing narrative that -- despite some longueurs after the one-hour mark -- grows progressively intense.
50
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
What primarily comes across is a film about squandered creativity that itself ignores and trivializes the creative process, pretending that child prodigies produce masterworks unconsciously, like a chicken laying eggs. That’s a poor lesson to impart.
42
The Playlist by Nikola Grozdanovic
The Kindergarten Teacher is too lackadaisical in its execution to be as profound as it thinks it is.