With its message of how we must “use the light within ourselves to stop the injustices of today”, White Bird perhaps has even greater resonance now than it might have done back when it was first supposed to debut in September 2022.

| Apr 8, 2025

Given the Holocaust theme, one wouldn't expect "White Bird" to be an engaging movie for children. It succeeds absolutely in modeling human kindness.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 6, 2025

Helen Mirren as Grandmother Sara, carries her role well as she tells the story, while Ariella Glaser as the young Sara, does just as well in a demanding role.

| Nov 6, 2024

A very serviceable telling of a story that we've seen one way or another many times before.

| Nov 4, 2024

White Bird might get some comparisons to The Diary of Anne Frank, but White Bird is a fictional story that won't be considered a classic. This dramatic film has good performances from the principal cast, despite the movie's treacly tone and drab dialogue.

| Oct 28, 2024

While the link between school bullying and Nazism seems disproportionate, it aligns with the general simplification of this story in which there are no nuances, only saints and monsters. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 23, 2024

A powerful and emotional film able to reach a younger audience to inspire kindness and humanity in a world that desperately needs it.

| Oct 21, 2024

While it relies on traditional narrative formulas, it also calls for introspection and change in times of violence and social hatred, using imagination as a vital force to overcome the vicissitudes of destiny. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 19, 2024

Handsomely mounted and earnest but stolid and sentimental, despite a fine cast and laudable goals.

| Original Score: C+ | Oct 12, 2024

The images in the film are gorgeous and indelible, and the emotions run surprisingly deep.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 12, 2024

"White Bird" is a moving film, which refuses to easily resolve its love story and is unafraid of genuine, terrible moments of heartbreak.

| Oct 11, 2024

A bloated but riveting and emotionally impactful Holocaust drama/romance about being othered and the importance of kindness

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 9, 2024

A great story, great cast, and good production values make White Bird a solid film.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 8, 2024

[Forster] and screenwriter Mark Bomback marry the handsome production to directorial and script choices that, for all their attempted restraint, lean toward the obvious, the blatant, and the sentimental.

| Oct 4, 2024

With elegant acting from its two young leads and picturesque cinematography from Matthias Koenigswieser, it serves as a competently executed morality play for audiences craving a bit of unambiguous humanism.

| Original Score: B | Oct 4, 2024

Forster’s steady direction keeps this thread of White Bird affecting even when it conforms to predictable narrative beats.

| Oct 4, 2024

This modest coming-of-age saga about persecution and survival during World War II tends to simplify and sanitize its gut-wrenching true-life backdrop, which compromises its emotional impact.

| Oct 4, 2024

Flying through a field traveled by many, White Bird lands with a familiar and heartening take on the Holocaust.

| Oct 4, 2024

A strong follow-up to Wonder, it’s a film with genuine heart that should appeal to audiences seeking an inspiring story.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 4, 2024

The storytelling plays broad but appropriate for the tone that is set, and the film becomes an absorbing portrait that succeeds despite the flaws, especially with the assist of Thomas Newman’s sweeping score.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 4, 2024