In a role that would be destroyed by even a whiff of melodrama, I, Olga Hepnarová offers one of the year's strongest performances by a woman on-screen. A film as timely as it is tragic and terrifying.

| Aug 25, 2018

Compositions often emphasize a dehumanizing effect: when Olga is executed, we first see a crowd of observers who step aside one by one until they reveal her dead body hanging there, in the most matter-of-fact way.

| Mar 8, 2018

We're left feeling that Olga herself might find the film expertly mounted but still missing a more visceral, pissed-off tone.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 24, 2017

[Olszanska's] glassy-eyed, understated rendition of a woman who's lost all touch with reality jars us from our senses, despite - or perhaps because of - the filmmakers' clear fascination with their protagonist's sex appeal.

| Mar 23, 2017

Anchored by a startling performance by Michalina Olszanska, the Czech film "I, Olga Hepnarova" is an austere, hypnotic story of sadness, madness and murder.

| Mar 22, 2017

I, Olga Hepnarov is a stoic and sobering character study of a lonely young lesbian murderess shunned by those around her.

| Mar 22, 2017

The filmmakers take few measures to engender sympathy for Olga, but their prismatic take on her life, while novel, precludes making any resonant statements about homosexuality, emotional health, or humankind's capacity for evil.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 20, 2017

Echoing the ethical complexity of Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing, Weinreb and Kazda offer no easy conclusions, only cruel, confusing realities.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 2, 2016

Easy to admire but hard to recommend.

| Nov 30, 2016

Shot in black and white, with no music and a punishingly relentless rhythm of suffering, this real-life Czech drama is brutally austere.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 20, 2016

First-timers Kazda and Weinreb, working from a story by Roman Cilek, struggle to give Hepnarova's story a wider meaning but their visualisations show a clear talent.

| Nov 17, 2016

Writer-directors Tomas Weinreb and Petr Kazda construct a still-topical case study of extreme trauma yielded by adolescent bullying and parental neglect, fronted with committed intensity by rising Polish star Michalina Olszanska.

| Nov 17, 2016

A modestly gripping debut which never quite musters the dramatic gravitas that such an emotionally charged true story should.

| Nov 17, 2016

So much of it is crushingly dull.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2016

Atmospheric and engrossing, this meticulous recreation of time and place acquires an unsettling contemporary relevance through its analysis of the mindset of a mass murderer with a death wish.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 16, 2016

A timely cautionary tale about the cycle of abuse.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 15, 2016