79
Metascore
19 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91The PlaylistGary GarrisonThe PlaylistGary GarrisonMidnight Traveler is a brutally honest film about the hardship and inhumanity a family endures and their bravery, love, hope, and, above all else, desire to control their own fate.
- 90Film ThreatAlex SavelievFilm ThreatAlex SavelievA call to action, a sobering first-hand look at the grueling ordeals refugees face, a story of love persevering against all odds, and a visceral, real-life thriller, Midnight Traveler is a unique cinematic experience that will hopefully snap us all to reality.
- 90VarietyScott TobiasVarietyScott TobiasShot on three mobile phones, Fazili’s Midnight Traveler is a documentary that feels like a modern-day message in a bottle, an urgent appeal for help from a family that’s still searching for a home.
- 88Slant MagazinePat BrownSlant MagazinePat BrownBalancing rough-edge verité with highly composed images and a meticulous structure, it doesn’t preclude itself from finding something like poetry in its subjects’ struggles.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterCaryn JamesThe Hollywood ReporterCaryn JamesCinematically modest but full of social and political urgency.
- 75Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreFazili has made an otherwise-unblinking cell-phone verite film of the crisis of our times, a first-person account of what people who cannot live where they are do to save themselves. Nobody watching “Midnight Traveler” can come away from it unimpressed, even if some are determined to look on this crisis and remain unmoved.
- 75The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThe A.V. ClubNoel MurrayIf nothing else, Hassan Fazili’s documentary, Midnight Traveler, offers a necessary corrective to the widely held contention that refugees have nothing to offer to the countries where they land.
- 75RogerEbert.comChristy LemireRogerEbert.comChristy LemireMidnight Traveler might have carried an even greater emotional wallop if we had a greater understanding of the feelings of the filmmaker whose work has endangered the lives of the people he loves most.
- 70The New York TimesManohla DargisThe New York TimesManohla DargisWhat largely distinguishes Midnight Traveler is its anxious intimacy, a sense of uneasy closeness that pulls you into a family circle that at times gets very small, creating a sense of appropriate claustrophobia.