A stern attack on Europe's apathy towards a calamity rooted in colonialism, Fischer's breakout festival hit is a visceral, disquieting experiment that speaks volumes about white guilt and premeditated institutional negligence.

| Jul 2, 2021

Old-school movie-making, and it works wonders.

| Original Score: 3.5 | Jun 15, 2021

More of a short story than a novel in terms of narrative complexity, Styx doesn't ultimately pack quite as much punch as one might like...

| Oct 28, 2020

The idea behind the German production Styx is so deceptively simple, and therefore, so highly complex and loaded with relevant ideas, that it's awe-inspiring how it all comes together.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 21, 2020

[A] thought-provoking moral drama.

| Mar 24, 2020

In a drifting mise-en-scène, the film represents its topical subject matter -- the plight of migrants -- as a timeless crisis of separation, and, for its protagonist, a bitter loss of innocence.

| Feb 25, 2020

The film places what we should have sworn to each other front & centre, and whether we have moved away from simple human compassion in the face of geopolitical hurdles. STYX strips that away to present a drama that is as contemplative as it is engrossing.

| Feb 13, 2020

The ending didn't exceed expectations, but this was a piercingly realistic cinematic experience based on an outrageous true story.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 22, 2019

It's a vital, highly intelligent movie that is both a first-class thriller and a biting commentary on our current world.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 16, 2019

It's the refugee crisis in microcosm, and Wolfgang Fischer's movie finds tense ways to create action and complicate the state of play. Still, I'd have preferred a final act that turned this problem-pondering drama into a full-blown thriller.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 29, 2019

A truly gripping journey into fear, whose questions about personal responsibility linger long after the closing credits.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 29, 2019

Styx is a gripping sea adventure that mixes thrills and spills with thoughtfulness and compassion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 28, 2019

The outcome is bleak. Powerful, potent cinema.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 26, 2019

If the metaphors for current refugee policies are sometimes heavy-handed, this response's angry despair is powerfully put.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 26, 2019

The economy with which Fisher tells us all this is impressive with a map here and a book spine there telling most of the story.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 26, 2019

Fischer's second feature is so minimalist it makes JC Chandor man-in-a-boat survival drama All is Lost look like Waterworld.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 26, 2019

Fischer literalises the turbulence we're now navigating, and asks some stern questions of our moral compasses.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 26, 2019

A foreboding drama which attempts to scrutinise Western bureaucracy and attitudes towards refugees and, for the most part, succeeds.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Apr 25, 2019

A work of high drama that is superbly executed. Through a measure of suggestive narrative guile, the film cannot help but make us think about the plight of refugees who risk it all in the Atlantic to try and get to Europe.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 25, 2019

Great stuff.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 25, 2019