This is a film in which acts of kindness are quietly delivered on the understanding that that’s what we owe each other, and one where sisterhood is alive — making this, paradoxically, a simultaneously enraging and heartening watch.

| Sep 29, 2023

In Lingui, the Sacred Bonds, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun presents a film of resilience and determination. He carefully exposes the many ways in which women are abused...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 8, 2023

A love story between mother and daughter, and between multi-generational women, who unite in solidarity in the face of systematic abuse. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jul 8, 2022

Deftly dodges fearmongering and victimization... prefers to adopt a celebratory attitude to pay homage to sisterhood and resistance, and to claim action against immoral norms. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 6, 2022

Lingui, the Sacred Bonds, like most films, has its structural lulls, but the whole is marvelously executed and memorably acted.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 17, 2022

Perhaps the warmest and most affirming film that Haroun has made to date, a tale of guile and endurance in a cruel, imperfect world.

| Original Score: B | Mar 15, 2022

Easily the best film I've seen from Chad... This is a very good movie.

| Mar 11, 2022

An engaging social issues drama that shows the special love between a mother and daughter.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 27, 2022

As sad and bleak as this story starts off, Lingui (which is Chadian for bond or connection) is a film that, as it goes along, blossoms with hope and inspiration.

| Feb 25, 2022

While a bit leisurely at times for westernized tastes, this flavorful drama nonetheless does powerfully underline the dangers and injustices...

| Feb 22, 2022

Another part is the state of their own connection -- frayed by harsh circumstance and in urgent need of repair. That repair work constitutes the heart of this beautiful film.

| Feb 19, 2022

The economical script builds reasonable tension, and the film moves assuredly from incident to incident with a simplicity in the storytelling that makes it seem old-fashioned, but winsomely so.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 18, 2022

It’s an infuriating movie that will summon your own outrage.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 17, 2022

Its depth continues to haunt long after the movie ends.

| Feb 16, 2022

Writer-director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun paints a world that can feel as vast as it is isolating...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 15, 2022

[A] compelling though not exactly subtle drama...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 6, 2022

The results are steadily engaging, but the melodramatic finale is unpersuasive.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 6, 2022

A pictorially elegant, gorgeously colored, radical feminist film.

| Feb 4, 2022

As we tag along with Harouns characters, we learn to appreciate their story as a small, but vivid study of lives that are so much more than their progressive developments.

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

The film is a social commentary that features little to no actual penetrative analysis beyond blanket statements about communal sisterhood in the face of patriarchal oppression.

| Feb 4, 2022