Mediterranea offers a human and touching look towards people who live outside society's margins and who here find an ennobling entity and dimension. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 20, 2022

A destabilizing operation operates raw, despite its latent violence as a continuum in which images, sequences and ellipses occur fluidly, deftly staggered, linked, linked, without ever splicing. [Full review in Spanish]

| Feb 16, 2017

A worthy heir of Italian neorealism with real locations, a naturalistic scene, nonprofessional actors and a handheld camera that closely follows the adventures of migrants. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 14, 2016

Mediterranean [is] a beautiful, tough-to-take look at the plight of migrants. It's also a bit of a wrist slap, and a necessary one.

| Sep 25, 2016

There are few films that navigate the refugee experience in recent years that operate with the same attention to detail.

| Original Score: Recommended | Apr 22, 2016

A timely humanistic immigration film.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 2, 2016

Though realized with great empathy and tact, the film fails to convey the catastrophic extent of the situation it addresses by keeping its narrative too tightly focused.

| Original Score: B | Feb 22, 2016

This debut feature from director Jonas Carpignano is often both harrowing and moving though this film festival favorite...falls short of some of the similar, and even more tragic, stories that can be heard just by turning on the news.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 10, 2015

It's a slow-burn study in feeling powerless and unwelcome, anchored by Seihon's performance as a man patient and adept at sussing out and adapting to what others need until he just can't do it any longer.

| Dec 4, 2015

Sad story about the struggles of two brothers from Burkina Faso who journey to Italy in hopes of finding a better life.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 26, 2015

If you're the sort to wonder what it is that drives people to leave their homes to find work in other countries, or even other continents, then think of the film as an educational experience.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Nov 23, 2015

"Mediterranea" does not solely owe its topicality to recent events, like the tragic sinking of an immigrant boat bound for Italy off the coast of Libya that resulted in 400 deaths, it will induce a shiver of recognition for American viewers too.

| Original Score: B | Nov 21, 2015

Offers a deliberately muted, finely textured account of the ordeals many Africans endure both before and after voyages to Europe in search of better lives.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 20, 2015

Carpignano glosses over much of the sociopolitical context in his depictions of the chain of events.

| Nov 20, 2015

This calm, hardheaded film never sacrifices its toughness for a swooning, misty-eyed moment of hope.

| Nov 19, 2015

Too much directorial obfuscation keeps this powerful refugee tale from being as potent as it could be.

| Nov 19, 2015

There's a specificity to Mediterranea that at times makes it feel like an actual documentary.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 19, 2015

A piercing character study whose narrow view frustrates complete empathy.

| Nov 17, 2015

The film is unwaveringly attentive to problematizing the dividing line between predator and prey.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 16, 2015

Both topically and dramatically, this is a film that matters more than most when immigration has reached an explosive status with people fleeing misery being blamed for the Paris terrorist attack.

| Nov 14, 2015