A strikingly directed and superbly acted drama that’s by turns disturbing and genuinely moving.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 11, 2022

A work of art striving to depict divinity. It almost reaches it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 22, 2021

Newcomer Lea van Acken is quite the discovery here, and despite the rather detached impression given, she manages to transform the film into an emotionally effective property transcending its sense of parable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 20, 2020

Built around an exceptional lead performance from débutante Lea van Acken, Stations of the Cross is a captivating and visually arresting catastrophe.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 3, 2019

Stations of the Cross is a quiet film, deep in content and profoundly critical of the Catholic Church's culture of repression that misguides young minds by limiting their senses and curtailing their experiences.

| Jun 21, 2017

Stations of the Cross belongs among the decade's best films about the lengths one must go to in order to balance strong beliefs with a tolerance toward a secular world that fights against those beliefs.

| Original Score: 8.9/10 | Jul 16, 2015

While the film's craftsmanship and experimental form go some way toward mitigating the convenient plotting and confused point of view, wrapping the whole in craw-sticking sanctimony is a sin too far for forgiveness.

| Original Score: C | Jul 11, 2015

In the end, the formalism of "Stations of the Cross" wouldn't work at all without the work of van Acken, a very talented young lady who's not only in every scene, she's often all there is to every scene.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 10, 2015

An austere, beautifully filmed and powerfully acted portrait of extreme religious fervor that slyly flirts with comedy.

| Jul 9, 2015

There's a purity, cinematic if not spiritual, to the way Brüggemann carefully composes each static shot, as though they all really were paintings to be arranged in succession along a line of pews.

| Original Score: B- | Jul 9, 2015

There's more than a sneaking suspicion that the rush to preach against religious excess -- a worthy pursuit -- has merely resulted in another form of sanctimonious sermonizing.

| Jul 7, 2015

Newcomer Van Acken is a phenomenal find and she's never less than believably torn between doing the right thing and being her own person.

| Jul 7, 2015

The ending's a touch too cute, but the best scenes here stand as potent, empathetic, well-observed broadsides against fundamentalism.

| Jul 7, 2015

A spiritual movie for practicing empathy and compassion for fearful fundamentalists.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 2, 2015

It understands that fitting in, for many contemporary youth, means standing out by attaching oneself to ideological tenets.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 27, 2015

Dietrich Brggemann's disturbing drama premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and is divided into 14 parts, often pale, minimalist tableaux, for the 14 Stations of the Cross.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 1, 2014

Stations of the Cross appears to acknowledge the miraculous, even as it descends into hell on Earth.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 30, 2014

Ascetic and unwavering, the film's gaze on the ultimate form of religious devotion offers the viewer few comforts but plenty to chew over.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 28, 2014

A bracingly audacious approach to storytelling sets this film apart from the crowd, as it recounts an unnerving series of events in an inventive way.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 28, 2014

Pared down images and intense, polemical dialogue capture a young girl's struggle to reconcile her personal belief in God with her community's blinkered religious values.

| Nov 28, 2014