By casting and working with nonpros, from a treatment with scenes she wrote each morning, [Chloé] Zhao taps into stories — perhaps much like theirs — with authenticity and empathy.

| Jul 29, 2024

An impressionistic look at the American West and the complex relationship the Lakota Sioux have with their traditions and the world in which they now find themselves.

| Feb 13, 2024

Songs My Brothers Taught Me is visually composed primarily of many of the so called Zhao flourishes or stylings, with particularly harrowing moments defining character experience but not the narrative thrust.

| Original Score: 70/100 | Nov 18, 2022

It's respectful to the lives of the characters it portrays, but doesn't try to make them better than they are. Watching it, you get to feel their reality, and that's enough for one film to offer.

| Oct 8, 2021

Songs My Brothers Taught Me is a beautifully shot film that honestly portrays the realities of the lives of a group of people in all of its hardship and also its beauty.

| Apr 25, 2021

Made with non-professional actors recruited locally, it's quite baggy - unlike Zhao's superb second feature, The Rider, a similar look at reservation life - but there's plenty going on.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 17, 2021

A striking debut from a blistering talent. What it lacks in narrative oomph it makes up for in beautiful imagery, natural performances and a worldview all its own.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 14, 2021

Despite an over-reliance on formula, the film's understated central performances and loving rapport between JaShaun and her brothers makes its reflection on new legacies a poignant one.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 13, 2021

Beguiling.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 9, 2021

The mystery and magic grow the longer you let it rest. Understated, but still impressive.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 6, 2021

A deeply intelligent and sympathetic rendering of real-life situations, using nonprofessionals playing approximations of themselves.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 6, 2021

An achingly poignant portrait of contemporary reservation life.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 25, 2020

Zhao, a first time filmmaker, patiently observes these conundrums rather than passing judgment, and her stellar cast of non-professional actors delivers a great ensemble performance.

| Nov 3, 2018

... shows the potential indie cinema still holds to offer an alternative vision of our country.

| Feb 15, 2018

Chlo Zhao's directorial debut Songs My Brothers Taught Me is a quiet, sensitive indigenous coming-of-age story set as high school graduation nears on the Pine Ridge Reserve.

| Aug 14, 2017

In Songs My Brothers Taught Me, Zhao and her team have created an emotionally compelling neo-realist portrait of a family and their community experiencing the stresses and pressures of post-colonial life.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 10, 2016

A moseying tour of life on the Lakota reservation, circa right now: the empty beauty of the badlands, the ancient struggle with alcohol, and the persistent push of youth to make good and make sense of a bad old world that somehow keeps hope alive.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 7, 2016

An outsider looking in voyeurism veering offensively close to being more about the filmmaker's fixation on her immigrant alienation - if not a blatant exotic poverty porn aesthetic - than the brutal internal isolation of her subjects absent of causality.

| Mar 26, 2016

Zhao's film is imperfect, but it's a heartfelt and gorgeous one with a very timely story at its core.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 12, 2016

[A] persuasively melancholy socialist realist drama.

| Mar 4, 2016