A must-watch if you’re interested in Black American history, post-1968 city governance, or documentary craft.

| Mar 24, 2023

Let the Fire Burn is an intense documentary that plays out like a fictional thriller. First time filmmaker Jason Osder hit a homerun his first time out.

| Feb 16, 2021

Powerful and disturbing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 2, 2019

Osder's technique makes this a film that's impossible to keep your eyes off of, and makes for one of the most effective documentaries to come out this year.

| Original Score: 7.9/10 | Jun 22, 2019

The violent clash between constitutional freedoms and social society, not to mention the racial conflict, make for a very American story.

| Feb 25, 2019

Director Jason Osder has created a film that is an accurate capsule of one extraordinary human rights violation approved and carried out by the political hierarchy of Philadelphia in 1983.

| Sep 18, 2017

There have been many documentaries comprised entirely out of archival footage, but few as powerfully and masterfully structured as this one.

| Mar 28, 2017

Director Jason Osder's grieving account of the deadly police assault on the MOVE collective's fortified Philadelphia row house works small, continuous miracles with a variety of existing footage.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 13, 2014

[This historic footage -- from newsreels, 온라인카지노추천 stations once-live coverage, from several investigating commissions -- has been edited, brilliantly into a coherent, important political film.

| Jun 13, 2014

[Osder] cuts between news footage of the events as they unfurled and testimony from hearings held afterward to create a stark, nonjudgmental portrait of an incident that probably needn't have happened.

| May 13, 2014

It's a remarkably evenhanded telling of a story in which there could be no winners, using archival footage alone.

| May 13, 2014

Let The Fire Burn is an incendiary documentary that uses archival footage to weave a compelling, all-important tale of tragedy bred from anger and misunderstanding.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Feb 17, 2014

"Let the Fire Burn" offers a searing picture of how dumb and dangerous humans can be.

| Original Score: B | Jan 23, 2014

It's scary as both a movie and a still-reverberating moment in time.

| Dec 10, 2013

Brilliantly edited, the film moves back and forth in time, first tracking the events leading up to the confrontation through news reports of the day.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 6, 2013

A unique and disturbing work, Jason Osder's documentary "Let the Fire Burn" uses only archival footage to tell the story of a terrible day in a Philadelphia neighborhood 28 years ago.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 5, 2013

Eschews talking-heads tradition in its potent examination of the 1985 Philadelphia police firebombing of a radical group known as MOVE.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 5, 2013

Osder creates both intensity and intimacy, inviting viewers simply to watch and listen as a tragedy - born of unchecked aggression, incoherent ideology and appallingly faulty logic - unfolds.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 5, 2013

Apart from the score and the very occasional basic intertitle to help us along, all we see and hear is footage from the day. We're immersed in the present of this world.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 14, 2013

It's gripping and shocking.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 7, 2013