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

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

| Apr 27, 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

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

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

Playground captures exactly what it feels like to be seven years old and starting a new school, which is another way of saying that it’s the most panic-attack-inducing film of the year.

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

Impossible to watch without a sick, jittery feeling of rage and dread.

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

A strong display of Wandel and her actors’ talent but keen to see something different next time.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 20, 2022

A powerful, emotionally compelling film, Playground captures with enormous force the very velocity with which children lose empathy when thrown into the jungle of the playground.

| Mar 13, 2022

This is a pretty terrific little movie.

| Mar 11, 2022

I was on the point of tears throughout, just as she is, knowing there’s no saving her, or anyone else, from what’s waiting ahead. It’s a film that will stay with me for a long time.

| Mar 8, 2022

No one in this movie has a complete understanding of what’s going on, but Wandel proves that a sensitive enough camera can provide a fuller picture than most.

| Feb 17, 2022

Playground doesn’t need to belabor the point for us to grasp it: It’s a jungle out there, even when you leave the jungle gym behind.

| Original Score: B | Feb 13, 2022

A harrowing picture of the memories many of us have tried to forget, where school is a warzone rife with violence and bullying, one that children are forced to largely maneuver alone.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 11, 2022

Fashioned out of fresh faces unable to lie to the camera, Playground is a study in human behavior wrapped in equal parts fear and curiosity.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 11, 2022

In a perfect hour and 12 minutes, “Playground” tells the sweeping, intimate story of a child’s coming into consciousness.

| Feb 10, 2022

Playground is practically an exercise in the use of off-camera space, and a masterful and refreshingly consistent one at that.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 4, 2022

Playground is a sensitive approach to a topic with universal relevance, that reminds us all what it felt like to be in that world.

| Feb 1, 2022

It generously studies its subjects - children, bullying, adults confronting the implications of the latter - and extracts haunting conclusions about the Darwinian nature of ostensibly idyllic settings.

| Dec 22, 2021

An ordinary primary school becomes a terrifying psychological battleground in Laura Wandel's deeply unnerving first feature.

| Nov 1, 2021