Elegantly edited by Tania Michel Nehme and performed with conviction by actors who’d never seen a film or a movie camera before, the pic is a stirring tribute to the power of love.

| Feb 11, 2025

...a truly one-of-a-kind cinematic experience that thrills both as a marvel of filmmaking, and as a document of a world that, to many of us, would appear to be a land before time, safeguarded from the destructive arrival of the white man.

| Original Score: A- | Jul 19, 2021

In translating this story to a cinematic experience, Butler and Dean have shared a bit of the Yakel people with the world in a new and innovative way, and the importance of such a cultural artifact cannot be understated.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 24, 2020

The Yakels allowed Dean considerable access into their lives and stories, all of which color Tanna's impressive results.

| Aug 6, 2019

Tanna combines visual beauty, sympathetic characters, and an underlying message concerning cultural survival into a rich viewing experience.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 21, 2019

Some sequences sag, through little more than familiarity, but Tanna largely engages and, when the rhythms really click, moves with spine-tingling depth.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 6, 2019

Tanna has an elemental beauty that is difficult to resist, and the lives and rituals of the Vanuatuan tribes are captured with a superb degree of fidelity and sensitivity.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 5, 2018

What makes Tanna feel particularly genuine is the pacing of its scenes.

| Aug 3, 2018

... an impossible love story derived in the most suggestive travel guide. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 14, 2017

The cast had never seen a movie camera before, let alone acted; and their costumes amount to grass skirts and penis sheaths (their habitual wear). Yet their candid performances put many trained thespians to shame.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 15, 2017

Tanna grows compellingly urgent, its Romeo-and-Juliet story becoming the story of that people's survival.

| Aug 24, 2017

Tanna isn't an exercise in voyeuristic exoticism.

| Aug 23, 2017

The human foreground isn't always that interesting, but the natural backdrop here is truly amazing.

| Jul 15, 2017

The film uses its 100 minutes smartly. Emotional notes are hit neatly and refreshingly.

| Jun 2, 2017

Aussie co-directors Martin Butler and Bentley Dean prize authenticity over conventional drama.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 1, 2017

What you'd expect from a foreign-language Oscar nominee: it's gorgeous, earnest and conventional, providing Western filmgoers with a glimpse of an isolated, defiantly anti-industrial milieu while ultimately affirming Western liberal individualist values.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 1, 2017

No film in this genre comes close to "Tanna" in terms of story-telling expertise, acting by non-professionals, cinematography, music and political insight.

| Mar 7, 2017

It's a familiar tale pitting selfish desire against the greater good, but it's like nothing you've ever seen thanks to the wondrous South Pacific landscapes.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 21, 2017

A tale of star-crossed love that is as poignant as the insights are acute into vanishing tradition and the changing status of women.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2017

An open-throated and universal call for change from within.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2017