A tender and moving drama that deserves wider exposure.

Full Review | Oct 11, 2005

Hard Goodbyes could easily have been maudlin, but isn't. Credit an adult script and realistic acting, especially by Giorgos Karayannis as Elias.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 16, 2005

Panayotopoulou does handle the material with sensitivity, but she relies too much on her young hero's unlikely precocity, which unwittingly diminishes the intensity of a child's very real grief.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 16, 2005

Considering the delicate and weighty subject matter, the film's tone is surprisingly light, sometimes even humorous, which helps to balance the harsh sentiments that death inevitably brings.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 16, 2005

A tender Greek drama documenting a child's disbelief in the face of his father's death.

Full Review | Sep 13, 2005

Goes from being appropriately child-like to simply childish.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 26, 2005

About nothing so much as a soulful kid's first encounter with the most literal and poetic meanings of the word 'gone.'

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 22, 2005

A tender, gently paced coming-of-age movie whose strength is its young lead actor.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 9, 2004

A complex charmer that shows us, in images and in behavior as poetic as they are plausible, a bittersweet parable about human adaptability.

Full Review | Jun 18, 2004

Poignant, convincing and directed with confidence and an enchanted eye.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 1, 2004

A lovingly observed elegy to lost innocence, conveying the emotional complexity of bereavement with the naivet of a child's perceptions.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2004