Without exaggerations, with narrative intelligence and several truly dazzling compositions, The Golden Dream is a story of camaraderie and friendship... [Full review in Spanish]

| Jul 2, 2024

Following the tradition of a road movie, The Golden Cage's protagonists succeed at an unbelievable cost, find happiness within the sadness and melancholy, and find an irreversible transformation through their cruel journey... [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 21, 2022

The Golden Dream is a bleak, occasionally harrowing but powerful drama. It is not the most uplifting of films but one that doesn't shy away from the truth.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 20, 2019

A coming of age drama of sorts as four kids up sticks and hike towards America, it never shirks away from the horrors of their journey.

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

An impressive blend of gritty realism and atmosphere-dreamlike sequences that only make its characters' real lives that much harder.

| Aug 29, 2018

Director Diego Quemada-Dez, who worked as a camera operator on a number of films including 21 Grams and The Constant Gardener, has let a little Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu and Fernando Meirelles rub off, which is never a bad thing.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 26, 2018

The Golden Dream is by no means an action film, but it has plenty of impressive stuntwork.

| Jan 28, 2016

For most of its running time, it's a bit of a slog. To some degree, it's a rewarding slog, and yet even then, not entirely.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 28, 2016

What these kids endure could easily read as melodrama on the page, but the movie - with its shaky camera work and amateur cast, including extras who were actual migrants - maintains a stark realism.

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

Given the racist hatred toward Latino immigrants, this is a film that will help increase much needed solidarity as well as deliver a powerful dramatic tale that succeeds in cinematic terms.

| Sep 4, 2015

La Jaula de Oro just may stand as the definitive Latino immigrant odyssey.

| Sep 4, 2015

"La Jaula de Oro" may seem like a rehash of old news. But don't be deceived.

| Sep 3, 2015

The filmmaking is fluid and electric; the acting, precise; the archetypal storytelling, seamless and brutal.

| Sep 3, 2015

Adding a welcome dynamism to the unobtrusive silent-witness storytelling approach so much in vogue on the international art-cinema scene, Quemada-Diez assembles "La jaula de oro" out of moments rich in action, humor and intrigue.

| Sep 1, 2015

This film carries a similar weightiness and moral heft to those tomes to mortality and realpolitik, yet retains a dreamlike quality that at times leaves the film in debt as much to Terrence Malick as Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 1, 2015

[The film] has an undeniable ring of truth.

Full Review | Sep 1, 2015

Through little dialogue, mostly improvised by the nonprofessional cast, Quemada-Dez creates much compassion toward his young travelers and the emotional truths they uncover.

| Aug 27, 2015

Quemada-Diez's approach emphasizes nature and naturalism, and the film never pretends that this adventure isn't dangerous and terrifying.

| Aug 25, 2015

An assured and moving debut by director Diego Quemada-Dez.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 7, 2014

Honest, interesting and well done it is not an uplifting film.

| Jul 7, 2014