Pairing these striking visuals with a fitting soundtrack...The Island President makes for a polished piece of documentary work that paints its subject as a stifled martyr.

| Feb 9, 2020

A smart and engaging portrait of a man for whom this issue hits closer to home than anyone, illustrating a tremendous issue that is now too big, and no longer able, to be ignored.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 6, 2019

The Hilton LightStay Sustainability Award, part of a programme in association with the Sundance Institute, is given to films that heighten sustainability awareness. And they could not have picked a better candidate than The Island President.

| Feb 28, 2019

Yet the documentary is at its most engrossing when it moves away from the big picture and focuses not on Mother Nature [but] a few of the people she affects -- especially the title character.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 4, 2019

One only hopes that the documentary will help advance Nasheed's mission and inspire others to join arms out of shared ecological concern.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 7, 2013

A fascinating look at an extraordinary personality.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 15, 2012

The Island President is an important portrait of a determined man standing fast in a place where the ground is literally shifting beneath his feet.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 14, 2012

The haunting "How to Disappear Completely" plays over the closing credits. If Nasheed isn't able to wake up the world to his country's plight, in a few decades, that could be the new Maldives national anthem.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 8, 2012

If you are in a fight, you want this man on your side. He is charismatic, brave and most of all entirely believes in what he is what he is doing. I'm not sure he know the meaning of the word compromise.

| Jun 1, 2012

Climate-change documentaries are almost always disturbing, but "The Island President" communicates a special urgency.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 3, 2012

As an insight into the cynical nature of world politics, The Island President is wonky but fascinating stuff ... But as a testament to mankind's willingness to change... it's deeply dispiriting.

| Original Score: B- | May 2, 2012

The film clearly sides with Nasheed's David as he battles Goliath-like businesses and governments, but it never loses sight of the fact that his efforts to preserve the fragile beauty of the sinking Maldives may already be doomed.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 27, 2012

Nasheed is indeed inspirational, a cool-headed but passionate and courageous guy. You end up wishing a lot more leaders were like this guy.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 26, 2012

Shenk's tight storytelling makes for a gripping film that delivers the ugly, at times ennobling, truth.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 20, 2012

Shenk expertly weaves Nasheed's extraordinary personal story together with the Maldives' breathtaking natural beauty and a Capra-esque tale of dogged idealism and political courage to create wonderfully vivid cinematic portraiture.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 20, 2012

A socially engaged documentary with more heart than head, this slice of boosterism focusing on the exiled Maldives president achieves unexpected ancillary connection as a ground-floor look at a grand clash of political and governmental wills.

| Original Score: B- | Apr 12, 2012

An absorbing portrait of a man trying to turn a tide of indifference.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 8, 2012

What makes Nasheed's whirligig tactics so urgent is that, unlike most other countries participating in the summit, his own nation is actually in danger of being annihilated by climate change.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 6, 2012

"The Island President"is heartening and unsettling by turns.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 5, 2012

Primary meets environmental documentary. A must-see now that political strife has forced the film's subject, President Mohamed Nasheed, to resign.

| Apr 4, 2012