A gritty coming-of-age drama that doubles as an authentic immersion into an Italian-Roma family.

| Sep 29, 2023

The Ciambra is a powerful coming-of-age story that ventures where rarely any other films dare to go.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 6, 2021

This is a vibrant if familiar art-house drama, with rough-and-tumble camerawork, highly physical performances, and fly-on-the-wall observations that recall the films of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne.

| Apr 7, 2020

We are never really invited into Pio's experience, instead kept at arm's length from the world he inhabits.That world is multifaceted and its our view from above as he navigates moving between them that keeps A Ciambra such an interesting watch.

| May 28, 2019

An uncompromising coming-of-age tale from a director skilled not just in collaborating with untrained actors but in observing society.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 21, 2019

An uncompromising coming-of-age tale from a director skilled not just in collaborating with untrained actors but in observing society.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 12, 2019

An electrifying coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of crime, poverty and immigration.

| Oct 31, 2018

The Ciambra is an amazing experience.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2018

Essentially playing variations on themselves, the Amato family infuses A Ciambra with raw immediacy and consistent unpredictability.

| Aug 20, 2018

Tim Curtin's handheld camerawork and Dan Romer's score are restless and energetic. Pio Amato, who is in almost every frame, makes for a charismatic lead. He is likable enough for the viewer to overlook his low-level lawlessness.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 27, 2018

[The] one-foot-in-reality approach immediately lends the drama a sense of lived-in, often uncomfortable authenticity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 23, 2018

Carpignano's mission seems to be to give the marginalized and voiceless a chance to represent their own stories.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 18, 2018

The film's rough vitality, fueled partly by Amato's ebullient relatives playing versions of themselves, can't mask those moments of contrivance, but it's absorbing all the same.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 18, 2018

A fascinating and considered study of outsider tensions, though a third-act turn that forces Pio to pick a side hammers the point home a little too hard.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 17, 2018

In Pio, Carpignano has found a natural star...

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 15, 2018

Carpignano doesn't judge his characters. He just lays bare what makes them tick.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 15, 2018

The plot feels loose but the performances are mesmerising.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 15, 2018

The textures and attention to detail enrich the familiar story beats.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 15, 2018

The wildly impressive amateur cast and novice Italian-American director Jonas Carpignano...have done their jobs and created an impossibly gripping fiction.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 15, 2018

Pio tells a story in his eyes alone, determination and vulnerability carried in a look; there's a career ahead of him, should he choose to leave the Ciambra life.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 14, 2018