A backwoods journey dense with beautiful images and brilliant acting...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 30, 2024

Director Haroula Rose is an artist of atmosphere, as the film's characters travel through territory that reflects their status in life. Kenadi DelaCerna is the glue, delivering a riveting performance and bearing many conflicted emotions. W/Interviews.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 18, 2024

If Margo isn't the most expressive character, it ends with the possibility that a resourceful orphan can make a new life for herself away from the repressive forces of her past, a trajectory it shares with Debra Granik's Winter's Bone and Leave No Trace.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 22, 2024

Telling of traumas that plague a Native American teenager, writer/director Haroula Rose shows the resonance of her protagonist’s experiences. Inequality is hardly a relic of history. This coming-of-age story is relevant to past, present and future

| Jul 22, 2024

There's a good bit to admire in director Haroula Rose's debut feature, but the story's second half falls apart, and the remaining pieces don't end up feeling conclusive enough.

| Original Score: 2 / 5 | Jun 25, 2021

There is plenty of potential here but it's a shame we spend so much time simply following the surface trajectory of Margo's life rather than diving into its emotional depths.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 25, 2021

Apart from the atmospheric wetland backdrop, the film's main asset is Kenadi DelaCerna, self-possessed and soulful in the role of the part Native American 15-year-old, Margo Crane.

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

...Once Upon A River fashionably elides some of the drama that might have made for a more intense watch, but it's still a darkly lyrical piece that commands attention for a fully-realised female lead...

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 7, 2021

Mark Twain meets Winter's Bone in this slice of Americana from first-time feature director Haroula Rose.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 4, 2021

Despite the sizeable setback in the final act, Once Upon A River is an affectionate coming-of-age tale that showcases promising debuts from both its filmmaker and leading performer.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 4, 2021

The girl is an unreal composite of self-reliance and abnormal, mythical isolation. ... Not enough is worked through, leaving the viewer unfulfilled.

| Feb 10, 2021

At best adequate as an adventure story.

| Original Score: C+ | Oct 30, 2020

Once Upon a River succumbs to an adaptation problem wherein it hustles through its encounters ... instead of slowing down to build any depth into its various compartments.

| Oct 29, 2020

Coming-of-age story about a Native American woman who benefits from the kindness of strangers.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 26, 2020

The tale ultimately morphs into one of human bonding and self discovery.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 16, 2020

[It's] an uncompromising, unrelenting look at issues that go deep when it comes to family problems, feeling isolated, and reaching out to find an emotional connection with someone who cares.

| Oct 9, 2020

Once Upon a River is a quiet, gorgeously shot meditative sojourn into the unknown.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 8, 2020

Too often, the movie leaves on the outside looking in.

| Oct 7, 2020

Book-based coming-of-age drama has mature material.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 7, 2020

While Rose's film is soulful and visually arresting, there is too much left undiscovered about Margo for it to connect as well as it should.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 4, 2020