Critic Reviews

• Peter Howell, Toronto Star

  Suleiman takes the approach of gentle observer, neither condoning nor confronting -- not violently, at least. Start with humor and perhaps empathy will follow.

• Rick Groen, Globe and Mail

  Living in a part of the world where politics, and the pursuit of politics by warring means, are the rule, director Elia Suleiman is the exception.

• Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle

  Despite its abundance of deadpan and absurdist humor, "The Time That Remains," a look at the Arab-Israeli conflict from a Palestinian perspective, was clearly made with a sorrowful heart.

• Adam Markovitz, Entertainment Weekly

  Suleiman's obvious gift for cinema makes you wish that in connecting so personally with his past, he'd occasionally reach out to the audience, too.

• Anthony Lane, New Yorker

  To keep a steady gaze, the film suggests, is not just a virtue but a form of orderly protest, when your world is breaking apart.

• Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

  A welcome example of kitsch wedded to serious indictment: Who knew that high-school screenings of Spartacus had such insidious purpose?

• David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews

  ...a missed opportunity of nigh epic proportions...

• John Beifuss, Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

  Deadpan, non-reactive characters inhabit the formally elegant, beautifully lensed and mostly static compositions that grace this movie about a hot subject that more often inspires heated, passionate, noisy debate.

• Andrew Schenker, House Next Door

  The Time That Remains, Elia Suleiman's six decade-spanning speculative remembrance, brings a bleakly comic sensibility -- as well as an insider's perspective -- to 60 turbulent years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• Noel Murray, AV Club

  Throughout, Suleiman contemplates how much has changed in his homeland since the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948, and how the natives have tried to maintain some continuity.

• Eric Kohn, indieWIRE

  Elia Suleiman is among the few living filmmakers to employ slapstick comedy in his work, and the only one to politicize it.

• Donald J. Levit, ReelTalk Movie Reviews

  If technique grows wearisome, still the rapid-fire, dry, visual vignettes do not obscure the picture of a community that cannot find its way.

• Nora Lee Mandel, Film-Forward.com

  [S]emi-autobiographical trilogy of Palestinian family's experiences from '48. . .culminates in. . .epic storytelling, with maturity and sorrow to match his now gray hair.

• Aaron Cutler, Slant Magazine

  One of the many simple conceits of Elia Suleiman's film is the way in which one man's silence becomes a metaphor for an entire nation's.

• Mark Keizer, Boxoffice Magazine

  The formalism Suleiman employs here provides a unique emotional entry point into the Palestinian dilemma, one that uses static shot composition and humor to clarify and comment, not to generate cheap laughs.

• Ian Buckwalter, NPR.org

  The silence of the character played by director Elia Suleiman lends the role a kind of invisibility that seems meant as an analogy to his view of the Arab presence in Israel. He's present, yet absent.

• David Noh, Film Journal International

  Family saga set against the backdrop of Israeli occupation has its moments, but suffers from a certain monotony in its direction.

Read all 17 critic reviews