A lot of the method relies upon scenes in which characters are given a prompt whose successful execution is less the point than the moment when something goes wrong and a revealing moment that couldn’t possibly staged breaks through...

| Jan 6, 2023

It's a post-modern sort of spirit photography, as the ectoplasm of the past spews into visibility, possession like, a document of how we're all whether we realize it or not formed out of the molecules of the dead

| Jul 2, 2021

Greene is not only a good filmmaker but a great teacher. Serrano belongs to the generation which will inherit this country very soon, is awoke. The film deeply affected me deeply on an emotional level.

| Feb 13, 2021

...a pretty limited effort all in all.

| Aug 6, 2020

Divisions, collaboration, dreams, nightmares, paranoia, land, facades, and capital have always been key cogs in the darkness of the American experiment, and Bisbee '17 won't let you forget that.

| Feb 25, 2020

Greene introduces his premise as though a game and then lets the camera capture personal truths his amateur actors learn in the process.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 14, 2019

A fierce and timely work, haunted by the sins of America's past that echo the atrocities of its present.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 5, 2019

Just whose America is this?

| Jun 1, 2019

When a film takes a moment in history previously unknown to most and turns it into a riveting, compelling film that breaks all bounds of what we think we know about documentaries, you've got a winner on your hands.

| May 29, 2019

As a collective conceptual art project, Bisbee '17 is stirring in its ambition and cathartic in its results.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 28, 2019

Bisbee '17 is a compelling story told in a format that doesn't quite work.

| Original Score: 6.5/10 | May 15, 2019

One of the best films so far this year: a powerful meditation on art's transformative abilities, as well as a sobering reminder that in any conflict, it's the victors who usually write the official history.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 25, 2019

Topical and urgent.

| Mar 2, 2019

The play between past and present political predicaments of immigration, unionisation and corporate corruption piercingly resonate thanks to Greene's ingenious sense of staging...

| Dec 5, 2018

The Deportation seemed to disappear from town history. It was rarely mentioned. Even today residents don't really talk of the Deportation. It is a town that can keep a secret.

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

Bisbee '17 speaks to the stakes of local history and amateur genealogy for places and people that are twinkling out of living memory.

| Oct 30, 2018

Robert Greene has created a thoughtful and sprawling documentary about facing up to the past by walking in the shadow of history.

| Oct 29, 2018

I was moved to tears, a rarity for me. It's closing passages are so exceptionally well-handled that one might actually forget they're watching a documentary recreation.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 29, 2018

Bisbee '17 is the rare documentary that also succeeds as a provocative cinematic statement.

| Oct 26, 2018

The unorthodox methods of "Bisbee '17" conjure up the past in a powerful and cathartic way.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 26, 2018