Anthony Shim’s Riceboy Sleeps is one of the most beautiful films of the year and is sure to have you sobbing from the opening minutes.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 7, 2025

Shot in static, long takes, “Riceboy Sleeps” throws an existentialist spanner on what people with unchecked privileges mean when they crave the “good old days” instead of those without.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 9, 2024

A story about transitioning between cultures with strong lead performances and an authentic feel that becomes moving and convincing

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 28, 2024

There is no trickery or artifice behind or in front of the camera and the locations on-screen are as genuine as the characters. But Shim and his cast strike their notes perfectly.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 2, 2024

After quietly assembling the building blocks of a cultural displacement drawn partly from his past, writer-director Anthony Shim gets going with a wrecking ball.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 1, 2024

The entire cast is excellent, and the young actors are utterly believable in their scenes. But the real star of the movie is Choi Seung-Yoon, who gives a wonderful performance as the mother.

| Dec 28, 2023

Despite its melodramatic missteps, which veer too far away from its exploration of the immigrant perspective, Riceboy Sleep’s power as a poignant, wholly personal experience cannot be denied.

| Nov 2, 2023

Riceboy Sleeps succeeds most is in its steadfast belief of the love of a parent for a child, and that story is tender and sympathetic.

| Sep 6, 2023

Home is a transient, liminal, and ever-changing place. Riceboy Sleeps is Shim’s way of creating an eternal version of the life he had with his mother.

| Jul 24, 2023

Riceboy Sleeps is imbued with strains of compassion, grace, and gentleness. A genre powered by poignancy.

| Jul 17, 2023

While at the start Riceboy Sleeps’ low-key progress is admirable but familiar, its long final stretch takes the film into a powerful realm of healing poignancy.

| Jun 2, 2023

A familiar immigrant song sung in such an elegant, sincere voice that it feels like a whole new arrangement.

| May 5, 2023

An imperfect but ultimately moving drama...

| May 4, 2023

The film-maker recounts his childhood years in a heartfelt, universal story about belonging.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 13, 2023

A single mother and her young son leave Korea to move to Canada in the hopes of a better life. But when a particularly difficult hardship befalls their small family, the two embark on a journey back to Korea to rediscover all that they left behind.

| Mar 23, 2023

The extraordinary Riceboy Sleeps is a revelation that reverberates days after seeing it. Its power is in its subtlety and spare style, we aren't so much watching mother and son as living inside them, a phenomenal achievement for filmmaker Anthony Shim.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 17, 2023

Anthony Shim’s film is a universal story about the depth of love between a mother and son.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 17, 2023

Riceboy Sleeps occasionally dips into melodrama, but is remarkably effective in its portrayal of the isolation and frustration that envelopes So-young and Dong-hyun’s new life.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 16, 2023

Shim’s cultural and character study comes together so artistically and pleasingly that it feels like the viewer has known this family for decades.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Mar 15, 2023

This is a tender, ambitious, meticulous and deeply empathetic work.

| Mar 15, 2023