The increasing absurdity, punctuated by beautiful images of nature, this leisurely paced film is an intoxicating mix of madcap imagination and sensory cinematic experience that is truly hard to forget.

| Jul 17, 2020

The latest extraordinary visual and sensual trip from openly queer Portuguese director Joao Pedro Rodrigues.

| Jun 5, 2020

Rodrigues's work frequently feels like experimental art rather than traditional narrative filmmaking, but The Ornithologist is a hypnotic and captivating bit of both.

| May 11, 2020

A contemporary vision about the sanctification. An audiovisual ritual in nowadays times. A good artwork. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3.75/5 | Jun 9, 2019

A hushed, whispered, almost transcendent work of spiritual self-exploration

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 4, 2019

An alternately hypnotic and slumberous hike deep into a wacky jungle of death, madness and religious symbolism.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 29, 2019

A pleasure to watch, but audiences are unlikely to emerge from the cinema feeling like they "got" it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 22, 2019

It's a pretentious piece of film-making too confused to make any sense out of its metaphors. It fails on every level except as a sleep aid.

| Original Score: D | Dec 27, 2018

The fun of watching the film is in trying to decipher the meanings behind each episode, which is probably easier for Christians well-educated in saint hagiography and their religion's vast network of symbolism.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 30, 2018

A strange religious parable that is far closer to the stuff of nightmares than anything remotely holy.

| Oct 8, 2018

An unabashedly surreal exploration of backwoods mysticism and religious fanaticism... The Ornithologist proves why Rodrigues is one of the world's most daring filmmakers.

| Aug 21, 2018

[Director] João Pedro Rodrigues mixes several aspects that interest him... and builds such an excessively personal and capricious film that is distant. [Full review in Spanish]

| May 29, 2018

In any case... it should not be ruled out that arbitrariness is the ultimate engine of this film. [Full review in Spanish]

| May 24, 2018

A blasphemous, regenerating, and necessary film.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 3, 2018

Merging Catholic hagiography and Portuguese folklore with his own personal journey, Rodrigues presents a liltingly lyrical but always demanding tract that bears the imprint of both Luis Buuel and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 22, 2017

The Ornithologist meanders in a pleasurable, kind of kooky way, befitting a film whose title evokes an Ornette Coleman album.

| Nov 15, 2017

A geographic quest that becomes spiritual, alternating moments of idyllic repose with physical extremes, both sexual and violent, so that there are no maps to follow.

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

Even if elements of The Ornithologist are a bit baffling, it's still a visual treat and it's certainly never boring.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2017

Certain moments, however, do achieve that spellbinding kind of strangeness, and there are also points where Rodrigues's seriousness of purpose is clear and powerful.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 9, 2017

The steel-stomached will find there's fun to be had with the film's investment in the spectacle of bodies (variously gory or sexy), and Fernando's increasingly surreal misadventures, which dance violently between the sacred and the profane.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 8, 2017