All the clichés about immigrant life are present here.

| Feb 14, 2018

A social observation drama, the director avoids any emotional blackmail. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 21, 2017

Fatima is a sensitizing jewel with minor imperfections brought about by an amateur protagonist who, paradoxically, injects realism to the complaint, even if it detracts from it. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 13, 2017

Although the French generally excel at "slice of life" storytelling, "Fatima" is just too small a slice.

| Sep 15, 2017

Fatima is a movie that demands to be seen about a woman who demands to be heard. She captivates.

| Jul 14, 2017

Philippe Faucon's compassionate drama of an Algerian émigré in Lyon, based on the memoirs of Fatima Elayoubi, stars Soria Zeroual as Fatima, a divorced mother of two teenage daughters, working multiple jobs as a cleaner to give her girls a better life.

| Mar 9, 2017

Well-observed and unassuming as this film is, it glides along rather too blandly.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 16, 2016

Honest, direct and dramatic without any sense of special pleading or situations pushed too hard.

| Sep 15, 2016

Never a downer but always clear-eyed, Fatima soars because it dares to toil.

| Sep 13, 2016

While Faucon's film treads over many of the same thematic conversations of films ranging from The Namesake to La Promesse, it nonetheless offers an impressively empathetic understanding of three very different generations.

| Original Score: B | Aug 26, 2016

It's sometimes funny, but always empathetic, and Faucon wisely leaves many of the most dramatic moments off-screen.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 26, 2016

A small miracle of a film from the French director Philippe Faucon.

| Aug 25, 2016

A quiet and subdued family drama about the struggle of Algerian immigrants to make a life in France today, a film that is ever so timely in light of the Islamophobia gripping the country.

| Aug 25, 2016

A tender and touching portrait of a Moroccan immigrant woman struggling to raise her two daughters in France.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 25, 2016

Fatima has its heart in the right place, but there's something dehumanizing about Faucon's approach: These characters, it seems, are too important as representational objects to ever become real people.

| Aug 24, 2016

Fatima adds another trim chapter to Faucon's catalog of social dramas with its affecting, highly focused story of a hard-working first-generation Moroccan mother, Fatima, and her two teenage daughters in Lyon.

| Aug 22, 2016

Philippe Faucon's praiseworthy Fatima tackles the fate of North African immigrants desperately trying to find their place in a French society which seems less than enthusiastic to acquire them with open arms or on equal terms.

| Aug 22, 2016

The film appears to have been devised to pander to the presumptions of Western, liberal viewers.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 22, 2016

A simple film about everyday drama is what makes Fátima a powerful film. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 7, 2016

Faucon brings back the odious concept of 'necessary cinema' in the privacy of a woman who pass her days trying to avoid the tedium. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 6, 2016