The Band's Visit (Bikur hatizmoret) Critic Reviews

The Band’s Visit has not provided any of the narrative payoffs we might have expected, but has provided something more valuable: An interlude involving two “enemies,” Arabs and Israelis, that shows them both as only ordinary people with ordinary hopes, lives and disappointments. It has also shown us two souls with rare beauty.Read the full review

A lovely, smart and beautifully understated film.Read the full review

Something marvelous happens as the filmmaker, in his first feature, expertly metes out small scenes of communication between people taught, for generations, to be wary of one another: This Band swings with the rhythms of hope.Read the full review

It's a small, profoundly satisfying movie that keeps echoing long after it's over.Read the full review

Tonally, The Band's Visit steps gingerly on the line between “sweetly humane” and “cloyingly quirky.”Read the full review

A "little" film with a great reach.Read the full review

Smart, subtle, deceptively simple little.Read the full review

It's a delicate parable, droll rather than funny, wise rather than smart. Eran Kolirin, debuting as a writer-director, has the deadpan sparseness of the Finnish Aki Kaurismaki, but his vision is gentler, less bleak; at moments, the movie is almost sentimental, but the performances save it every time.Read the full review

Both sweet-natured and sharply pointed, a film whose poignant, emotional effects and subtle acting sneak up on you.Read the full review