Critic Reviews

• Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

  Oblivion (El Olvido) throws its net across a considerable range of human behavior and bittersweet survival stories, and the result is a wise and beautiful documentary from Dutch filmmaker Heddy Honigmann.

• Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

  The point of Oblivion is to rescue some sense of the beauty and individuality of people who live in a place most of us only hear about when it suffers an earthquake or a military coup.

• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

  Prolific filmmaker Heddy Honigmann, the champion of the little people, is back and in fine form.

• Manohla Dargis, New York Times

  Oblivion is a movie so suffused with feeling for its human subjects that when a man starts weeping, you don't feel dirty about watching his tears fall.

• Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York

  This astonishing documentary takes a contemplative look at Peru's recent political history via members of the service and street classes who reside in the capital city of Lima.

• J. Hoberman, Village Voice

  The result is a tender, poetically aimless movie by someone who no longer dwells among these stoic people, but feels like she might be the only one who remembers them.

• Kam Williams, NewsBlaze

  Slumming, South American-style!

• Noel Murray, AV Club

  Oblivion contains more than its share of indelible images and memorable characters.

• Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru

  An honest, captivating, quietly poignant and illuminating documentary.

• Sara Maria Vizcarrondo, Boxoffice Magazine

  Poetic in its structure and humane in its storytelling, Oblivion is poignant, filled with interviews that effortlessly speak volumes.

• Paul Brenner, Filmcritic.com

  a tone poem of emptiness.

• Bill Weber, Slant Magazine

  Asserts that, under a tragicomic two centuries of home misrule, the most devalued citizens of Lima have failed to be consigned to the limbo ("el olvido") the oligarchy has constructed for them.

• Louis Proyect, rec.arts.movies.reviews

  Unstinting but lyrical documentary on the costs of poverty in Peru, especially on the children who scramble for coins on the streets of Lima as they ply their trades as gymnasts, jugglers, musicians and shoeshine boys.

• Maria Garcia, Film Journal International

  Like all of Heddy Honigmann's films, Oblivion, set in her native Lima, Peru, obliterates any previously held notions we might have had about the subjects she confronts, which, in this case, are intentional forgetfulness and the forgotten of Lima.

• Rob Humanick, Projection Booth

  Oblivion maintains its focus on Peru but its examination of corruption renders its insights universal.

Read all 15 critic reviews