Any minimal reproach that can be made to the film is easily overlooked by the narrative power... [Full review in Spanish]

| Aug 18, 2023

Lion's Den is the film by a team -actress and director- who fully trusts the material at hand, building, unlike few recent Argentine films, an absolute emotional empathy with the protagonist. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 18, 2023

As a voyeur and in Italian neorealistic fashion, Trapero follows the characters with narrative agility rarely seen in national cinema. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jul 31, 2023

It wraps up in its seeming apparatus of a murder thriller and prison saga, a more moving and overarching parable of female maturation and gut-wrenching motherly love.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 31, 2019

Leonera is a gritty, earnest drama that mixes breast-feeding and screaming infants into more familiar scenarios of lesbian romance, shower assaults, strip-searches and bonfire riots.

| Dec 15, 2017

Riveting, harrowing and thoroughly infused with hope and love, this prison drama is so realistic that it's often difficult to watch

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 4, 2010

Frustratingly, the film tells us little about the crime itself and the denouement is a little unconvincing. The taste of sweat and fear is, however, real enough.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 26, 2010

Real inmates are extras, real cells provide the scenery: it has the desperate vitality of something barely made-up.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 25, 2010

Less than the sum of its parts? Yes. Nice parts? Yes.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 25, 2010

Lion's Den is an unqualified success.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 25, 2010

How do you raise a child in prison? Argentinian director Pablo Trapero tackles that question with affecting skill in this initially squalid yet ultimately uplifting social drama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 25, 2010

No melodrama, no thriller twists, just Trapero's camera sticking to his lead actress like sweat.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 25, 2010

[Features] a strong central performance and convincing depiction of the compartmentalisation of Argentina's women.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 25, 2010

The results are mixed -- a handful of moments of genuine, undeniable power, interspersed with a fair number of listless scenes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 31, 2009

When it hits, the emotional intensity is ratcheted up, sometimes to overly showy levels, before ending relatively quietly with an escape attempt that, depending on one's view, is either gratifying or tragic.

| Jul 17, 2009

The dimly lit, exquisitely composed cinematography, by Guillermo Nieto, adds to the draw of this highly recommended movie.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 3, 2009

A thoroughly captivating and engrossing drama with a raw, unforgettable performance by Martina Gusman.

| Original Score: 9.25/10 | Jul 3, 2009

Although it is not a comedy, Lion's Den is suffused with a sense of life lived in the present. Even the grimmest moments are not exploited to instill fear and loathing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 3, 2009

Part meticulous character study, part hyperrealist drama...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 2, 2009

A portrait of a subculture whose members take pride in walking their kids to the penitentiary's pre-K class.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 1, 2009