Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh’s feature debut, Gagarine, is a beautifully told story about shattered dreams with magical realism attached to it.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 24, 2024

Just when the movie flails and meanders, Liatard and Trouih surprise us with an extraordinary tonal and genre shift... [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 7, 2022

Charming and sympathetic portrayals by Alséni Bathily and Lyna Khoudri make Gagarine feel warmly satisfying and make it a passable and peculiar French indie.

| Jun 5, 2022

The filmmakers are hypnotized by space, as it has been lived, and as it presents itself as form, function and dreams, with only weeks, days, instants to stand. Hope is fragile; so is IGagarineI, but it is touching and often beautiful.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 21, 2022

A wonderful merging of magic realism and neorealism.

| Apr 19, 2022

A really original and inventive little movie. It's also kind of odd.

| Apr 19, 2022

The cinematography and visual language of the film are beautifully balanced between expressing a lived-in feeling, a sort of celebration of people over property, and an otherworldly, often stark quality of an outdated space station.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 15, 2022

A sweet and sentimental story about immigrants being evicted from their dilapidated French apartment building that gets a little too dreamy for its own sake.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 9, 2022

Gagarine is a melancholy achievement that reminds us how young minds find ways to cope with situations they can't yet deal with, and Youri's journey is quietly devastating as the demolition approaches.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 4, 2022

Gagarine is a sweet and wistful story of a young French boys stifled dreams and unfortunate surroundings, as he dreams of space travel. However, the meandering pace and loose plot may lose the viewers attention.

| Apr 4, 2022

Although it's rough around the edges, the tender and heartfelt story resonates beyond geographical and cultural boundaries.

| Apr 2, 2022

This is a disarmingly sweet if also sad spin on coming-of-age territory, with a whimsical, somewhat spectral tone all its own.

| Apr 1, 2022

Through the very real circumstances of the Cité Gagarine, directors Liatard and Trouilh put faces and names to the many public policy discussions conducted in private that destroy both the lives and legacies of real people.

| Apr 1, 2022

A remarkable and unique blend of non-fiction and fiction and a rich coming of age film.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 1, 2022

The camaraderie between the characters is so strong and effective that Liatard and Trouilhs occasional forays into magical realism feel intrusive and forced.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 1, 2022

Despite a relatively thin script, Gagarine conjures wonder and melancholy in equal measure, offering a hopeful look at both life on the margins and life at the end of the world or a world, at least without ever devolving into the saccharine.

| Apr 1, 2022

It’s a piece of urban history seen through the lens of magic realism, a fragile but beguiling fantasy, tethered now and then to gritty reality, about a do-gooder doing the best he can against daunting odds.

| Apr 1, 2022

“Gagarine” is more interesting conceptually than it is in execution, but at least the filmmakers know to exalt the setting’s spectral qualities, adding dreamy, hypnotic touches to their phantom portrait of a place that is no longer of this world.

| Mar 31, 2022

A sweet, melancholy magical realist drama...

| Mar 31, 2022

A sweet, tender and poetic allegory about the importance of conquering adversity and the power of the imagination. Alseni Bathily is a revelation.

| Mar 31, 2022