A vital but all-too-rare exploration of Black motherhood struggling on the margins.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 19, 2023

It’s bleak at times, but there is a defiantly celebratory aspect to the film, which finds hope in the solidarity of Black women and dignity in Gia’s quiet stoicism.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 9, 2023

[Nomore] is a performer to watch in a film by a director who has, clearly, arrived.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 8, 2023

Earth Mama exists at a strange juncture of politically charged statement cinema and borderline new-ageiness, but the quiet audacity of Leaf’s approach makes it something eloquent and singular.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 7, 2023

The first insanely good entry into what we can hope will be a long and winding career behind the camera.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 7, 2023

A piercingly emotional drama, acted with natural flair.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2023

In Leaf’s evenhanded telling, there are no perfect options — only a menu of imperfect ones.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 25, 2023

I love the way this is constructed: she makes you work hard to empathize with these women... But she gets you there.

| Jul 22, 2023

“Earth Mama” is an unflinching, authentic portrait of when motherhood, sisterhood, and womanhood converge with class and race.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 21, 2023

If the filmmaking feels poetic and subdued, it’s the opposite of coy. Leaf is confident enough to let her images, as much as her written dialogue, do much of the narrative lifting.

| Jul 14, 2023

The film is intimate, modestly scaled and often so outwardly unassuming that you might not at first notice its artistry.

| Jul 13, 2023

Savanah Leaf’s slice-of-life movie is full of these revelatory moments -- sometimes lyrical, sometimes gritty, often swirling the two together

| Jul 10, 2023

It’s an evocative debut that immerses the audience into the reality of someone well deserving of our attention, and compassion.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 6, 2023

Leaf dramatizes Gia’s conflicts in scenes of trenchant dialogue... which give voice to the multigenerational traumas of Black families torn apart for political purposes.

| Jul 5, 2023

“Earth Mama” raises the expectation that it’s a portrait, not just of an issue, but of a person, and in most ways, it lives up to that.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 4, 2023

Despite Earth Mama’s bleak subject matter, it exudes a beatific warmth, in large part because Leaf takes remarkable pains to dramatize a web of solidarity between a group of Black women alongside her depiction of the very system that disenfranchises them.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 30, 2023

A wildly confident debut that displays Leaf’s great control of performances and cinematography.

| Feb 3, 2023

A delicate stunner.

| Jan 22, 2023

Filmmaker Savanah Leaf began her career making music videos, and her feature debut reflects her ability to transmit great emotional depth in small snapshots.

| Jan 21, 2023

“Earth Mama,” therefore, demands viewers witness. And what viewers see is... unmistakable beauty...

| Original Score: B- | Jan 20, 2023