You Will Die at Twenty is a quietly stirring, hard-hitting look at a boy’s dour predicted fate, how that affects his life, and how such a prediction can do more damage than an actual early death itself.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 3, 2024

Sudanese film-maker Amjad Abu Alala's radiant drama dares to wonder if death could inspire courage rather than fear.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 14, 2021

Its quiet profundity strikes you hours, days after viewing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2021

Spins an intelligent and affecting yarn in complex hues.

| Nov 9, 2021

[A] gentle, affecting Sudanese drama...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 8, 2021

Abu Alala's ideas are quite elementary, explored at a surface-level and never wielded into something complex or thought-provoking.

| Jul 2, 2021

The journey toward present allegorical conceits, shaped into strung-along plotting that drags ... is only minimally evocative in grasping the [film's] substantial weight.

| Jun 5, 2021

Both the narrative quality and stylistic grounds suggest a crossing between Youssef Chahine and Satyajit Ray, in a sad film dedicated to the victims of the Sudanese Revolution.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 18, 2021

You Will Die at Twenty is Sudan's very first Oscar submission, and it's a completely captivating one.

| Original Score: A- | Feb 3, 2021

[The film] has a beauty and confidence that suggests a major career ahead for Amjad Abu Alala, whose debut directorial feature it is.

| Feb 2, 2021

A beautiful, sombre parable.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 29, 2021

A wryly funny folk tale of innocence and experience, it's a film about navigating the space between worldliness and godliness.

| Jan 29, 2021

While it could have easily been a dark comedy, and almost is, instead, it's perfectly sincere.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 29, 2021

Amjad Abu Alala's stunningly photographed drama challenges strict dogmatic practices and posits how a life without a moral code can cause much damage.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 28, 2021

Abu Alala's ardent attention to daily details, rooted in political and cultural history, offers a powerful symbolic vision of the tormented and violent legacy of dogmatism and dictatorship.

| Jan 25, 2021

Considering the parameters...Alala's groundbreaking feature-length debut is even more impressive.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 23, 2021

A vibrant and transfixing revelation, "You Will Die at 20" is as novel a vision as we may see this year. From its meaningful ideas on the here and the hereafter, its lesson for Muzamil is that after perishing a rebirth may follow.

| Jan 23, 2021

I wish it were a little more polished and tighter dramatically, but it has some incredibly powerful scenes and I do applaud it.

| Jan 23, 2021

Set in a remote Sudanese village where religion and prophecy are valuable currencies, You Will Die at Twenty beautifully examines misguided notions of faith.

| Original Score: B | Jan 22, 2021

Alala deepens this simple, fable-like premise into a lyrical confrontation with the certitudes of faith and the life-giving powers of doubt.

| Jan 21, 2021