There's hope here: hope in the idea that abandoning friendships is still bad and that families, blood or relational, are still the glue holding society together...

| Jan 5, 2024

[L]ike so many LGBTQ coming-of-age stories before it, You Can Live Forever is about crushing your heart into a pulp. And, like so many of those, it succeeds — though with an added note of misery.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 16, 2023

A film with this plotline has the potential to leave its audience shattered, but You Can Live Forever just leaves us wanting to feel more.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Aug 17, 2023

You Can Live Forever is a study of the way a person’s presence can grow in your life. They have found a one-in-a-million human connection that’s impossible to forget.

| Jul 24, 2023

You Can Live Forever is a beautiful film that artfully reflects the complexity of loving someone beyond the restrictions of their faith.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 22, 2023

This compassionate story of puppy love – co-written and codirected by the former Witness Sarah Watts – shows more understanding towards the community.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 4, 2023

... Poignant by teen-drama standards.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 15, 2023

This gently moving Canadian drama is based on the real-life experiences of first-time filmmaker Sarah Watts... This gives the movie an earthy honesty that adds grit to understated production values and realistically tentative performances.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 13, 2023

It’s got something of Jeanette Winterson’s tenderness, if not exactly the wit, and the movie is interesting and even faintly subversive in its implied analogies concerning conversion and enclosed behaviour systems.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 12, 2023

For a film that hinges on risk, the characters are perplexingly laissez-faire. Lethargic, languid and lacklustre, the striking visuals of an epic coastline cannot save what is otherwise a laboured plod.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 10, 2023

A stunning, vulnerable film that is the best film of 2023 so far. A lot has to do with being able to relate to these characters - the time and place. A familiar story bolstered by tender performances and confident direction. Loved everything about this.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 31, 2023

Because the film is gunning for realism, a conventional ending isn’t in the cards. But it’s satisfactory all the same. Without spoiling it, it speaks of listening to yourself before buying into anyone else’s creed.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 24, 2023

Accurately illustrates every side of the Jehovah's Witness lifestyle through riveting romantic drama that puts the brainwashing realities of their society on display.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 22, 2023

You Can Live Forever is a powerful story of young love, religion and queerness. Emotionally stirring as it follows two teens experiencing all the longing, anxiety and joy of first love, but under the stifling grip of blind faith.

| May 20, 2023

The film tells a sad yet nostalgic story that’s likely to resonate with many young moviegoers, whatever their sexual or religious orientations.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 17, 2023

Sweet, gentle, and understated.

| May 17, 2023

It moves along at a rather slow pace and doesn't quite reach the emotional summation it was looking for, but it's commendable and worth seeing.

| May 17, 2023

Slutsky and Watts precisely capture how it feels for Jaime and Marike to be penned in by the obligations and expectations of their families and congregations.

| May 10, 2023

beautiful, honest and touching queer drama... There are very few depictions of Jehovah’s Witnesses in film and almost always the filmmakers get some aspects of that religion’s culture wrong. You Can Live Forever is spot on in every single aspect.

| May 10, 2023

“You Can Live Forever” will play well with LGBTQ+ viewers, while also addressing matters that go beyond sexual orientation. Anyone who recalls the complicated path of young, first love should be able to relate.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 8, 2023