It's a film with a singular focus, but it goes about it in an inventive way, and it's obvious to see why Ahmed invested so much effort into this worthy project.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 17, 2024

Centred by a performance which further confirms Ahmed’s bona fides as a leading man, Mogul Mowgli has energy to spare, but it could do with a mite more stillness to find its truest self.

| Jun 5, 2023

An incredibly raw and powerful piece of acting... Between this and The Sound Of Metal, it cements Ahmed as one of the finest actors working today.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 12, 2022

Mogul Mowgli confirms Bassam Tariq's facility with resonant themes and strong performances. Its success would land him a coveted job as the director of Marvel's Blade reboot.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 4, 2022

If you only know Riz Ahmed from Rogue One or Venom, Mogul Mowgli is an intimate showcase for the talent that got him there. A vocal advocate for diversity in cinema, he leaps at the chance to make the kind of art he wants to see more of.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 26, 2022

Mogul Mowgli is sometimes exciting, sometimes funny, sometime sad.

| Oct 15, 2021

Not every scene fully hits its marks, but Mogul Mowgli is never content to be a standard indie drama.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 11, 2021

Mogul Mowgli chronicles artistic temperament in a specific and likely for many unfamiliar cultural context, as Ahmed again demonstrates his skillful versatility and mesmerizing charisma on screen.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 2, 2021

Mogul Mowgli is a powerful testament to multicultural identity crisis and generational divide - one that is poignantly explored through rap and Qawwali [Sufi Islamic devotional singing].

| Sep 28, 2021

... a story rooted in a search for identity, both as a brown rapper in Britain and as a man losing control of his own body.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 17, 2021

The results are strong because Ahmed is in total control, continuing to show what a terrific presence he brings to film.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 16, 2021

Mogul Mowgli opts for a whole lot of metaphor, and that isn't a bad thing. When you explore your identity, your past, your family, it isn't ever straight and simple in your head - why should it be in a cinematic excavation?

| Sep 16, 2021

Mogul Mowgli is an emotional drama about one man going through a horrific health scare to discover himself. It's powerful stuff, led by the always powerful Riz Ahmed.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 15, 2021

The result is the kind of nearly-one-man-show that's so flimsy beyond providing a star setting, it can hardly help but seem something of a vanity-project indulgence.

| Sep 13, 2021

Riz Ahmed is on a hot streak. Everything he touches or acts in seems to turn to gold.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 11, 2021

Bassim Tariq is the real, splendiferous thing, a filmmaker who, with a dynamic performer like Ahmed in front of the camera, etches indelible portraiture and makes poetry of jumbles of sensation.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Sep 11, 2021

Even though this is a feature, it nearly feels like a documentary illuminating the immigrant's plight. Adding Zed's health crisis as an obstacle to fulfilling the rapper's dreams in a film released during a pandemic makes it even more visceral.

| Sep 10, 2021

The audience is thrown into Zed's world (or rather, worlds), and it's Ahmed's astounding performance that provides the through line. It's OK to be lost, because Zed is.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 9, 2021

This fever dream of a film will be most appreciated by those...with knowledge of such history as the 1947 Partition of India, as Tariq refuses to spoon feed his audience, building his character profile with childhood memories and adult nightmares

| Original Score: B- | Sep 7, 2021

This is an intimate story, sometimes uncomfortably so, but it's also an expansive one, about whether our societies allow people to live outside prescribed boxes and whether it accepts them when they do.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 5, 2021