Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
Kino Lorber | Release Date: January 19, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
94
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 5, 2024
The panoramic intelligence of this film is a wonder. Read full review
100
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenFeb 9, 2024
You watch the film feeling as if life is precious—that every moment holds the chance for great wonder or great tragedy, even if, on most days, we live somewhere in between. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangJan 25, 2024
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell reminds us that confusion is often a necessary first step toward enlightenment, and that bafflement and beauty often go hand in hand. This is a lesson that Thiên must learn as well. The gift of this movie is that it invites us to learn it alongside him. Read full review
100
The PlaylistMarya E. GatesJul 20, 2023
Winner of the Caméra d’Or for the best first feature film last month at the Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Pham Thien An’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is a deeply felt three-hour spiritual odyssey about grief in its many forms. Read full review
100
Screen DailyAllan HunterMay 27, 2023
This is a remarkable debut feature; provocative, absorbing and mysterious. There are no easy answers to the big existential questions, just a desire to seek them out with a kind heart and good intentions. In the end you just have to have faith. Read full review
93
The Daily BeastNick SchagerJan 19, 2024
A three-hour drama whose slender story serves as the skeleton for a formally exquisite examination of loss, faith, family, and connection, it's the year’s first masterpiece. Read full review
91
The Film StageLeonardo GoiJan 18, 2024
This is, at its core, the story of a resurrection, spiritual and sensorial; at its most transcendental, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell makes Thien’s awakening your own. Read full review
90
ColliderChase HutchinsonJan 18, 2024
Cinema as an art form is made infinitely richer via films like Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell. As we let it linger in our minds just as the camera does up until one final unbroken shot, you drift somewhere you've never been before and may never be again. Read full review
90
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonJan 18, 2024
Pham manages to float existential and spiritual questions into Thien’s consciousness and ours without trying to offer solutions, at least in language. Read full review
90
VarietyGuy LodgeMay 27, 2023
This is challenging but seductive art cinema that invites comparisons to such titans as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai Ming-liang and even Theo Angelopoulos, without feeling derivative of any. Read full review
89
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpJan 19, 2024
It’s a journey jammed with pleasures we can all appreciate, and canopied by questions we all ask. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMonica CastilloJan 19, 2024
Pham Thien An’s contemplative drama “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” blurs the line between surrealism and realism, faith and loss in a subdued search for purpose in the wake of a tragedy. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineJake ColeSep 8, 2023
The protagonist may feel cut off from the world, but the film is deeply in harmony with it. Read full review
83
IndieWireJosh Slater-WilliamsMay 27, 2023
It’s the kind of film that steadily trains you in perceiving and eventually becoming lost in its sense of time, to the extent that you can almost forget the presence of the camera even when it is moving. You’re living in the frame with Thien; the timing of the camera and character naturally intertwined. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalZachary BarnesJan 18, 2024
There’s something singularly fulfilling in a film, like this one, that truly demands that most precious commodity: our attention. Read full review
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