I must give Martel credit for her firmness in sticking to the story. But there wasn't enough visually or thematically here in a film that focuses on a man who is…just waiting.

| Original Score: D- | May 9, 2024

Given my previous description of Lucrecia Martel, it will likely not surprise you that Zama is not for everyone. It is slow moving, difficult, and takes some real work to access as a viewer. That said, it is also a wonderful film...

| Feb 21, 2024

Zama demonstrates Lucrecia Martel's intelligence in surgically designing scenes and capturing her particular vision of the story. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 13, 2023

Zama is the kind of historical film that refuses to concede even the smallest positivity to the history in question.

| Dec 6, 2023

A well done period piece

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 3, 2022

Sensuous and formally audacious - a tremendous synthesis of textual adaptation, directorial authorship, sociopolitical commentary, and sophisticated filmmaking.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 14, 2022

Zama manages to balance the line between being completely fascinating and utterly tedious

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 6, 2021

Zama is an utterly brilliant film. See it on the big screen if you can.

| Jul 17, 2020

Zama is that rarest of creative feats: a perfect coupling of literary source material and cinematic sensibility.

| Mar 9, 2020

As an existential objet d'art Zama stands as a serious achievement. But that won't prevent even the most sophisticated of cinephiles from staggering out of the theater, wondering "What in the world did I just see?"

| Original Score: B | Feb 12, 2020

In a series of deliberately staged scenes of ravishing visual and auditory design, Martel observes the folly with calculated detachment. Resisting any and all temptations to explain, the filmmaker speaks through images that explore a series of tensions...

| Aug 5, 2019

Languishing in a godforsaken, 18th-century South American colony, pining for his family and desperate beyond measure to be gone, magistrate Don Diego de Zama is in fact going precisely nowhere.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 7, 2019

Where the coconuts are.

| Jun 4, 2019

Martel tackles the inherent contradictions of colonialism and its destructive history by subtly tweaking its practitioners with sly humor and a devastating satirical eye.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 3, 2019

A film that is haunting, baffling, and frustrating in equal measure.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 12, 2019

It's a comedy of errors of bleakly dystopian existentialism, the farce of his successes leading him right where we thought his failures would nothing short of brilliant.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 8, 2019

This blackly funny-and ultimately haunting-examination of colonial history is thoroughly characteristic in its brilliant manipulation of physical space.

| Jan 17, 2019

Filled with situations that mirror the social and racial preconception of the time, this hypnotic tale of punishment and atrocious colonialism is an engrossing experience, likely to be turned into a cult film.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 9, 2019

As befits a film about waiting for answers, this is a languid and enervating watch, and feverishly funny. By halfway I was desperate for something to happen and I was then somewhat over-rewarded in this regard.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 11, 2018

If cinema is about being transported to another place, Martel is unrivaled as a guide...

| Dec 7, 2018