The film's spiritual overtones are compelling, however, Makala risks alienating some audiences by its silencing and aestheticization of the subjects it depicts. It is still a blissful 96 minutes, nonetheless.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 22, 2019

Makala shows far more than it tells, allowing the story to emerge gradually from a series of gorgeous visuals.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 27, 2018

Filmgoers looking for something to explicitly counter August's summer movie exhaustion should get first in line for Makala.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 24, 2018

Makala depicts a harsh reality, but its unexpected beauty comes from the nonchalance of its portrayal.

| Original Score: 8.8/10 | Aug 23, 2018

To ponder the colonial implications of a French director exoticizing a Congolese man whose family eats rats for meals is to realize that a movie can be heartwarming and heartless at once.

| Aug 23, 2018

Avoids most of the traps of exoticism...but it makes the mistake of using observation as its only route to intimacy.

| Apr 21, 2018

Makala examines the tribulations of desolation and solitude with such respect that it's impossible not to feel compassion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 22, 2018

Emmanuel Gras resists pitying or sentimentalizing his main subject, or exalting him merely for his resilience in the face of such a harsh, uncaring reality.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 22, 2018

There are no theatrics in Makala -- it takes a steady and purposeful pace -- but the images caught are worthy of IMAX. It's completely immersive filmmaking.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2018

Makala the film offers the kind of confrontational, truthful depiction of capitalism that ought to screen early and often in schools.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 5, 2018

As well as being sure to remind you how fortunate you are, Emmanuel Gras's film is beautiful and poetic, something it achieves without condescension.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 5, 2018

This immersive, slow-burning documentary about a Congolese charcoal maker finds poetry in the punishing, monotonous graft of one man's trade.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 4, 2018

The toil becomes mythical; there are heartbreaking echoes of The Old Man and the Sea as thieves run off with some of his hard-won cargo.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 2, 2018

Tough, tough going, but rewarding.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 2, 2018

It is a sad and lonely world, sympathetically captured, beautifully photographed.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 2, 2018

A stunning depiction of a life most of us will never experience. This is an incredible documentary which pushes the format to new heights of meaning and is ultimately extremely rewarding.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 1, 2018

It plays like some post-apocalyptic Malick movie: thick dust storms, whispered prayers and an aching empathy for people scraping a living amid utter deprivation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 30, 2018

A viewing experience that is not so much the study of a man but a sensory immersion; a journey of sweat and blood and steadfast resolution that is keenly, painfully felt.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 29, 2018

The quest narrative and the predictable setbacks it contains ultimately tighten their grip on the film, to such an extent that Kabwita's individual fate soon feels like just another vehicle for the same eminently valid point made countless times before.

| Nov 15, 2017

The quality of the camera is simple sublime. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 1, 2017