Playground crystallizes the cruelty, the poetry, the life-and-death largeness of childhood.

| Jul 24, 2024

You see Nora’s world literally from her point of view as the camera mostly shoots from the level of her head, so adults appear like disembodied legs and torsos unless they make the effort to get down to the kids’ level.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 18, 2024

This may be the most stress-inducing, heartbreaking movie of 2022, and it’s only 72-minutes long.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 20, 2022

The director builds a labyrinth of conflicting feelings, betrayal, resentment, the power of guilt, and the possibility of reconciliation, to lucidly and tenderly achieve this magnificent portrait of childhood. [Full review in Spanish]

| Nov 21, 2022

This is a film that, similar to Eighth Grade, should become required viewing in schools. Providing many teachable lessons for pupils and staff alike.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 13, 2022

Few films have so accurately captured how children interact with each other at school, without glossing over the intense levels of emotional and physical abuse that’s dished out by their peers.

| Jul 29, 2022

‘Playground’ is about the strength and resilience of children. It’s a poignant scene as curtains fall down and 7-year-old Nora imparts a beautiful lesson to us, so relevant in today's world. Only love can heal everything.

| Jul 20, 2022

Larua Wandel's debut film is an accomplished visceral portrayal of childhood cruelty and its repercussions. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 15, 2022

Wandel’s film is too wrenching to be called a movie for children. But children would recognise the truth and the complexity of it, which is surely the highest praise.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 10, 2022

A heartbreaking story of schoolyard bullying which finds a new way to approach that topic. The film’s told, in more than one sense, at a child’s level.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 27, 2022

It's a painful watch, but "Playground" captures childhood anxiety with a unique ruthlessness and honestly.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 20, 2022

Like a Dardenne brothers film, a work about bodies that move, suffer and get stuck. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 19, 2022

Playground is commendable in treating break-time brouhahas like the far-reaching, formative conflicts they really are.

| Apr 27, 2022

Clocking in at a brisk 72 minutes, Playground doesn’t mess about. But its clean, spare execution makes all the difference, and Wandel’s powerful drama leaves one hell of a mark.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 27, 2022

A beautiful film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 25, 2022

It’s a remarkable achievement.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2022

A claustrophobic portrait of pre-adolescent turmoil, this is an exceptionally taut drama. It’s Wandel’s debut feature, and it feels like she’s been preparing for it her whole life.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 22, 2022

Acted with incredible naturalism by its young actors, Wandel’s film is shot from the perspective of a young child, making even the best intentioned adults seem irrelevant to the primordial struggle being enacted at the lunchtime break.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2022

It’s a brilliant and gruelling watch for everyone who ever felt they didn’t fit in at school themselves, and it will doubtless resonate with parents of school-age children and teachers with experience of bullying.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 21, 2022

An unflinchingly honest, heartbreaking and gorgeously acted tale of schoolyard-bullying

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 21, 2022