Midnight Traveler
Oscilloscope | Release Date: September 18, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
79
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
The PlaylistGary GarrisonApr 18, 2019
Midnight 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. Read full review
90
Little White LiesSophie Monks KaufmanDec 1, 2021
Hassan doesn’t need to provide a grand framing device. You sense their powerlessness, you are embedded within it. There is no omniscient camera to take the audience away because there is no freedom of movement for the Fazilis. Read full review
90
Film ThreatAlex SavelievApr 18, 2019
A 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. Read full review
90
Screen DailyWendy IdeApr 18, 2019
The suffering, fear and humiliation that they experience is balanced by moments of warmth and an artist’s magpie eye for unexpected glimpses of beauty. It’s a remarkable achievement. Read full review
90
VarietyScott TobiasApr 18, 2019
Shot 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. Read full review
88
Washington PostVanessa H. LarsonOct 15, 2019
A timely, essential film. Read full review
88
Slant MagazinePat BrownSep 16, 2019
Balancing 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. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichOct 3, 2019
It’s a project that was made to restore a certain way of seeing; to punch a hole through the screen that separates people from the reality of what’s happening in their world. But in trying to get so close to the truth without touching it, Hassan almost fell into the same gap that he was trying to bridge. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Simran HansJan 20, 2020
[A] remarkable documentary. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 16, 2020
A powerful, personal piece of work. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranOct 3, 2019
It is the gift of Midnight Traveler to allow us to feel this family’s fate in the pit of our stomachs. If the plight of refugees has ever seemed abstract, this film makes sure you know how real it is. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterCaryn JamesApr 18, 2019
Cinematically modest but full of social and political urgency. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 22, 2019
Midnight Traveler unfolds in many kinds of limbo, and the one between living a disaster and recording it for the world to see is the least problematic. Like its makers — all four of them — the movie is flawed, human, hopeful, and desperate for a place to land. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonOct 2, 2019
Midnight Traveler gets the bulk of its humanity from little Zahra and Nargis. The resilience of children is often amazing, and near the end of the film, when they play in the snow for the first time, you get a glimpse of hope for their futures. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireSep 18, 2019
Midnight 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. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubNoel MurraySep 17, 2019
If 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. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 17, 2019
Fazili 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. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisSep 18, 2019
What 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. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleJenny NulfOct 9, 2019
What makes Midnight Traveler distinct from its counterparts is that it follows filmmaker Hassan Fazili’s own family, and the intimacy he’s able to capture over the life spans of three iPhones makes his documentary more tender and honest and immediate. Read full review
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