Son of Saul is one of the richest and most personal of all Holocaust films, backed by a stunning central performance and realized by a filmmaker who has an incredibly bright future ahead of him.

| Original Score: A | Jun 17, 2024

Grappling with themes of self-preservation and mental stability amongst abject barbarity, Son of Saul packs an emotional punch all its own, while seeking to convey the essence of an individual living in abhorrent chaos.

| Aug 1, 2023

A difficult, harrowing, and exhausting film to endure – claustrophobic and psychological. But it’s also an intimate and gripping experience and an extraordinary feature film debut from László Nemes.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 25, 2022

If the intention is to give us even a fleeting experience of what it could have been like to live in constant fear, hoping for a breath of humanity in a life shaped by evil, then it has achieved that entirely.

| May 5, 2021

I understand Godard's criticism of Schindler's List now. No holocaust movie should be a thriller. Hungarian first timer Laszlo Nemes's Auschwitz set drama is at once riveting and quietly devastating experience and it doesn't feel like a gimmick.

| Feb 14, 2021

Son of Saul presents a gargantuan moral victory in the face of incomprehensible evil.

| Jan 7, 2021

Its jagged stylistic urgency [makes] it unlike any prior Holocaust drama

| Oct 28, 2020

Nemes also achieves a cinema separated from sentimentality that offers a sober, unavoidable and gloomy glimpse of dehumanization in times of war. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 26, 2020

László Nemes believes in the viewer's capabilities and gives him an intelligent, hard and real film. [Full Review in Spanish]

| May 14, 2020

Son of Saul is a film of considerable virtuosity, a harrowing film like no other before it.

| Mar 16, 2020

Absolutely worth your time.

| Oct 17, 2019

This film will certainly stick with you. That's for sure.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Sep 19, 2019

It's a deeply harrowing experience.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 26, 2019

The horror around him remains blurred; we only hear it. It's still hard to watch. But as the story of one man's relentless quest for a glimmer of nobility, Son of Saul earns its right to be unforgettable.

| Aug 8, 2019

Son of Saul is a powerful reminder that things can get bad awfully quick if we're not paying attention.

| Aug 2, 2019

Technically astounding and emotionally resonant, only the feeling that we never fully understand Saul or his motivations (despite spending the entire film with him) lets Son of Saul down.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 19, 2019

Beyond hope and fear, it's a story where there are no miracles, no resolution and no-one survives. It's unforgettable.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 22, 2019

It's not literally filmed in a single take or real-time, but Nemes' storytelling mastery approximates that sensibility as we follow Saul through his haunting sensory journey.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 4, 2018

It's expectedly an awful time at the movies, but also an important and problematic work that can't be dismissed.

| Nov 3, 2018

I'm not sure there are many of you strong enough to even read about it without getting teary.

| Aug 29, 2018