The Missing Picture
Strand Releasing | Release Date: October 4, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaApr 4, 2014
In his own profound and ingenious way, Panh has brought the pictures and the thoughts together again. Read full review
100
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanApr 3, 2014
As haunting as it is haunted, The Missing Picture leaves viewers’ heads rattling with ghosts. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisMar 19, 2014
The audacity of The Missing Picture — a brilliant documentary about a child who held on to life in Cambodia’s killing fields — is equaled only by its soulfulness. Read full review
100
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekMar 18, 2014
The Missing Picture is so immediate, so vital, it practically breathes. Not all memoirs need to exist. But the gentle urgency of Panh's story is right there in the filmmaking. This is a story that had to be told. Even in its stillness, it moves. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfMar 18, 2014
Either via clay dolls or fragile flesh, the truth is unmissable—as is Panh’s film itself. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Mar 13, 2014
The Missing Picture might have felt academic, even coldly removed, were it not for its scathing narration, penned by Panh (with Christophe Bataille) and read by Randal Douc. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 20, 2014
These miniatures magnify their subjects, and ennoble them. The picture is anguishing to see, but it isn't missing anymore. Read full review
90
The DissolveScott TobiasMar 18, 2014
This film confirms that Panh approaches the past not as a historian, but as an artist, and an exceptionally vital one at that. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranOct 3, 2013
The Missing Picture is personal and unexpected, a documentary that mixes media in an unusual way to very potent effect. Read full review
88
Boston GlobePeter KeoughApr 3, 2014
His film aspires to a poetry about barbarism that will not let us forget. Read full review
88
New York PostFarran Smith NehmeMar 20, 2014
Panh’s technique achieves things a conventional documentary could not, as when he pans across dozens of the clay figures jumbled in a box, in a shot that calls up both the toys of childhood, and graves. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc MohanApr 16, 2014
The Missing Picture feels akin to last year's great documentary, "The Act of Killing." Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJordan HoffmanMar 20, 2014
This chronicle is impossible not to watch. Read full review
80
Total FilmPhilip KempJan 1, 2014
Panh’s commentary – spoken in French by Randal Douc – searingly sets the context. Read full review
80
Film.comJordan HoffmanJan 1, 2014
A gripping, fascinating and visually arresting memoir. Read full review
80
EmpireDavid ParkinsonJan 1, 2014
Powerful and mesmerising, this offers an fresh approach to a tough topic. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonTrevor JohnstonDec 17, 2013
The effect is talismanic: overlaid by a thoughtful voiceover, it invites the audience to share the pain in a cathartic act of imaginative reclamation. Read full review
80
VarietyJustin ChangOct 3, 2013
The film is a brave act of witness complicated by the documaker’s decision to re-create his experiences using clay figurines, a tricky aesthetic device that raises fascinating and problematic questions of representation. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireMar 21, 2014
As an examination of memory and experience and how they shape us, The Missing Picture is meaningful beyond its specific subject matter. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesBill StametsMar 13, 2014
The Missing Picture is a wrenching yet tender memoir by Rithy Panh about life and death in the time of Pol Pot. Read full review
75
The PlaylistJessica KiangJan 29, 2014
If some elements are more successful than others in achieving a balance between the public and the private, between the story of a nation’s ruination and that of a family’s annihilation, it remains a shocking, poignant and soulful tribute to lives ended and to innocence lost in the country’s notorious Killing Fields. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineNick McCarthyOct 3, 2013
Paramount to molding a narrative of war and totalitarianism, however, is the inventive aesthetic in which Panh frames his memoir: a hypnotic hybrid of bleak archival footage, thoughtful voiceover, tone-dictating music, and—most significantly—homemade clay-figurine dioramas. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterNeil YoungOct 3, 2013
A deliberately distanced but often harrowing vision of a living hell. Read full review
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