Kågerman and Lilja craft a visionary film—one that is profoundly despairing yet also worthy of comparison to the great existential space epics

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 15, 2025

A deep, probing meditation on the acceptance of one’s place in the universe... Aniara might be a ship without a destination but this film is ultimately destined to become a timeless sci-fi classic.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 11, 2022

As interesting as "Aniara" is to think about, the movie isn't exactly an engaging watch.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 8, 2021

This is a smart, science fiction drama with a particularly literary sensibility.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 17, 2020

But where the verse novel revels in the interplay between science and poetry ... the film trades instead in cheap, catchpenny luridness.

| Jul 30, 2020

Aniara explores an interesting thesis about the resilience and adaptability of the human spirit: as long as there is life, there is hope.

| Jul 23, 2020

ANIARA does not offer a resolution, nor hope, nor catharsis. The film presents, if anything, a warning: our existence is a universal privilege to cherish, not a selfish entitlement to be hubristically guarded.

| Feb 13, 2020

Aniara mostly feels like a dramatization of facts rather than telling a story.

| Jan 21, 2020

Although little of this is new, it's delivered with poise and grace, aided by finely tuned performances. Interpersonal dynamics are explored with a light touch but it takes only the slightest deviation to reveal great gulfs of darkness.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 12, 2019

It's an acquired taste and its view on humanity is perhaps blacker than the depths of space, but Aniara is sci-fi of melancholy near-brilliance.

| Original Score: 4 | Oct 22, 2019

You start going through all the logistical problems inherent in this scenario... [But] once I was able to get past some of that, then I was able to absorb some of the big existential questions.

| Sep 30, 2019

Aniara cogently makes the point that if mankind ever does manage to leave this blighted planet for another, we'll bring our problems with us.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 5, 2019

Aniara is a compelling study of human nature, which never shies away from condemning the ways in which mankind has scuppered its own continued existence, and will continue to do so even when it does consider a move into the stars.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 3, 2019

A haunting allegorical tale, Aniara warns of humanity hurtling in the wrong direction and realising too late that there is no turning back.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 31, 2019

Special effects are used minimally, the directors instead concentrating on the fragile human emotions of the disparate travellers, among whom Jonsson especially impresses.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2019

A strange and unsettling sci-fi which has a rather bleak outlook on the future of humanity.

| Aug 29, 2019

A cold, cruel, piercingly humane sci-fi parable that's both bang on the zeitgeist and yet also unnervingly original.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 28, 2019

It's terrifying precisely because it looks current rather than space age. We see ourselves reflected more clearly, and don't have the luxury of thinking that a futuristic setting means we have time to spare. Oh and the ending is a belter.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 20, 2019

Aniara watchers will be divided into exactly one of two camps: those who think that this bleak and mournful contemplation of life is nigh-perfect and those who are furious about having been tricked into watching a Swedish space orgy.

| Original Score: A+ | Aug 16, 2019

Aniara is an assortment of ideas that never gel together into a single narrative, instead half-forming into a fractured tale that fails to connect with the human emotion it tries to portray.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 5, 2019