…it probably helps if you love football, but Zidane was a sportman who transcended sport, and non-footie fans may still find this ethereal film to be a transformative experience…

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2024

As far as these filmmakers are concerned, Zidane, especially in the moments of tedium, is the modern day 'Outsider' in the true Camusian sense. As such this movie is more an analysis of the immigrant experience than of a footballer.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2018

If you believe soccer is indeed the beautiful game, then you're destined to fall hopelessly in love with what you see here.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 15, 2018

For all the fuss that's sometimes been made of the film's semi-experimental approach, it is first and foremost a sensory experience that puts the viewer right on the field.

| Jul 12, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

In moments of stillness, a composition of fast jukes and stutter-steps delight the eye. It's a lot of hurry-up and wait at first, but well worth it come the film's finish.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 27, 2008

You learn little by way of hard facts about the adored French soccer star and famous head-butter Zinedine Zidane in the formalist exercise that bears his name.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 24, 2008

He's set apart not only as the piece's sole subject but because he's hyper-alert, continually responding to invisible forces, raptly focused on events beyond the frame.

| Oct 22, 2008

An overblown nearly-real-time documentary-cum-"art installation."

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 21, 2008

Alternately hypnotic and irksome.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 4, 2007

Watching a single athlete for the duration of a game is an interesting concept, but Zidane is better in theory than in execution.

| Original Score: C- | Feb 12, 2007

There's more filler than real action (much like any soccer match, in my opinion) and the film is a challenge to get all the way through for anyone without an interest in the game or Zidane himself.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 25, 2007

Strangely enjoyable.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 28, 2006

It's both a revelation and a simple confirmation of everything you've ever believed, and an incredibly powerful, deeply emotional experience.

| Oct 28, 2006

The stuff between goals can be agonizingly dull, but the film's sensory impact is heightened by Mogwai's menacing score and Darius Khondji's dazzling cinematography.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 28, 2006

It mesmerises yet it also bores. It's a fascinating experiment and a frustrating film.

| Oct 28, 2006

This 17-camera portrait of the artist as an ageing star still captures the magnetism and balletic genius of a player whose reputation will surely survive the naysaying of holier-than-thou commentators following his World Cup 2006 dismissal.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 28, 2006

Zidane's charisma accumulates and the film becomes a hypnotic experience to which you must simply abandon yourself.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 28, 2006

Absolutely hypnotizing.

Full Review | Sep 14, 2006

The World Cup-winning god of French soccer, Zinedine Zidane, is brought crashing to the ground in Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon's ill-conceived documentary Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.

Full Review | May 26, 2006