The plot is sluggish, but the film’s credibility is always intriguing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 24, 2022

A solid film bolstered by its gripping central performance.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 18, 2022

Jonas Carpignano’s impressive, slow-burning drama captures a milieu that is bound by rules that have little to do with the laws of the land.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 18, 2022

This gripping and emotive drama follows Chiara’s attempts to come to terms with her father’s criminal legacy...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2022

Another very impressive achievement from Carpignano.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 11, 2022

I never knew where it was going, and I was gripped... It was just so well done.

| Jun 7, 2022

Carpignano delivers a fascinating take and perspective in familiar territory, focusing on how a crime family’s fallout affects a young girl’s sense of self.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 3, 2022

The limiting style and characterizations in A Chiara are only so thoughtful.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 27, 2022

What’s best about “A Chiara” is its totality of naturalism and subjectivity — how it humanely complicates a teenager’s newfound self-possession...

| May 27, 2022

The essence of the film is Chiara watching and learning, and watching Swamy Rotolo observe is simply a marvel. With her dark eyes and eyebrows, she delivers truly fierce face, like all the great Italian actresses that came before her.

| May 26, 2022

In the neorealist tradition, “A Chiara” is a slice-of-life drama built around an idea and animated by a profound moral quandary.

| May 26, 2022

'A Chiara' contemplates a character who is forced to grow up too fast, acknowledging the cost of family secrets and weighing the consequences of upholding a status quo that obscures reality.

| Original Score: B- | May 24, 2022

Carpignano’s script is put together with an ingenuity that deftly avoids every looming cliche. He doesn’t romanticise the mafia’s corruption or its violence, but he doesn’t sensationalise it either.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 14, 2022

However uncertain we may be about who Chiara is or ultimately decides to become, Carpignano's trilogy has made it powerfully clear just how far that decision will resonate.

| Original Score: B- | Oct 28, 2021

The film's initial aimlessness is pleasurable for the way that it allows the viewer to stare at life being processed on the stunned, confused, and ecstatic face of a teenager.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 24, 2021

"A Chiara" will likely expand the director's visibility and send people back to watching his earlier features.

| Jul 13, 2021