Even on such a small scale, Gerima is able to craft a deeply intimate portrait that also feels expansive in its commentary.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 5, 2022

Residue is a furious, ferocious film, both a love letter and a middle finger to the one-and-only Chocolate City.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 30, 2021

Residue, directed by Merawi Gerima, presents gentrification as nothing less than an act of open hostility.

| Aug 28, 2021

As Gerima peels back the layers of history and memory, past melds with present as does the imagined with the real.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Nov 29, 2020

In Gerima's lens, the alienation of gentrification is rendered in almost impressionistic ways.

| Nov 17, 2020

Because this is a film that flows rather than catapults through its plot, the stuff that another movie would pull off too neatly here feels ephemeral and slippery. The textures Gerima generates are as rigorous as they are personal.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 23, 2020

Drama about impact of gentrification falls short; language.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 19, 2020

Merawi Gerima's directorial debut Residue is an impassioned ode to a rapidly gentrifying Washington D.C.

| Oct 16, 2020

Be it a person or a city, "Residue" is a kind of poetic depiction of what essentially constitutes a literal erasure of an identity to fit the desires of the affluent.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 8, 2020

It's a fiction, true, but a fiction that Gerima builds out of his own experience, as well as the experience of the people he grew up with in D.C., a semi-autobiographical work of astonishing vulnerability.

| Original Score: 8.5/10 | Oct 2, 2020

Impressionistic filmmaking recounts an elusive personal story using a variety of artful photographic styles, edited together with eye-catching energy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 24, 2020

For every lyrical sequence that mixes nostalgia and trauma with ease, there are countless moments that feel thrown together, underwritten and poorly produced.

| Original Score: 2.5/5.0 | Sep 21, 2020

A righteously angry meditation on people, place and time, "Residue" marks not just an arresting directing debut for Gerima, but a blunt statement on contemporary culture.

| Sep 21, 2020

This is an effective, distinctive, and highly mature work of cinema. For a film in its own right it is hugely impressive. As a directorial debut, it really is a marvel.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Sep 20, 2020

Jay maintains an affective proximity to his old home; close contact with family, old friends, and a former lover bring us closer to the aloof budding filmmaker, who can't seem to grasp how he has grown so estranged from his past life...

| Sep 18, 2020

The film sings in its attempts to show the complex nature of one affected by the change of a place they are no longer a part of.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 18, 2020

An artful and piercing debut.

| Sep 18, 2020

...Residue is fiction, but the truth driving it is captivating.

| Sep 17, 2020

Gerima's challenging, engrossing filmmaking style is measured, simultaneously realistic and impressionistic.

| Sep 17, 2020

These issues persist. And Gerima explores new ways to dwell on them. If nothing else, the feelings he drums up in Residue linger.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 17, 2020