Popular reviews

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  Review by Lynn Betts ★★★½

  TIFF #9

  This movie is all about a young man who either has an accident or was the victim of violence... and all that was to follow: the varied reactions, the legal repercussions and the social implications. 

  I am not going to tell you which it is. 

  All I know is that I have a friend who died in the same manner and it was ruled an accident - but half of our mutual friends believed it was something more sinister. But in their grief, did they want someone to blame? It was a tragedy and had all of the circumstances to clearly be an accident. 

  Meanwhile the last time I lied (not lying about this, either) was when I…

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  Review by Alan Michael ★★★½

  Very reminiscent of A Hero in terms of a lie just going completely out of control. Very well shot and a great performance from the lead actress, Vita Smachelyuk.
  Better than I expected going in, plus the director was very nice and chill and was wearing cool shorts for the Q&A.

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  Review by Four Winds Movie Reviews ★★★★

  A cautionary tale about the unforeseeable chain reaction of lies in a milieu of xenophobia and social politics. When desire and entitlement supersede and self governs conscience.

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  Review by 𝕜𝕖𝕟ℙ𝕓𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕤 ★★★★ 2

  8 /10

  
  The moral & lifestyle quandaries were as well considered as the politics & it’s a sign of that success that I was, like the Lead character, always thinking a few steps ahead & contemplating consequences & alternative responses.

  Understated in tone, & sharply written interactions (especially when factoring in the those differences between the business colleague & the cop) , the acting is excellent, the characters believable -
  in short, this movie is too smart to resort to tired ol’ Miserable-ism,

  
  From the 2023 ‘Europa, Europa Film Festival’.

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  Review by CJ Johnson ★★★½

  Solid foggy very Eastern European social-realist issue-oriented contemporary morality play. My wheelhouse. A little more suspense would’ve strengthened it immensely. Ukrainian Melissa Leo was very good.

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  Review by sokf ★★

  our teacher got up in like 1/3 of the movie and left to read newspapers outside and I agree with that move very much

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  Review by Tijana ★★ 3

  Film o krivici
  Ali i film koji imam osecaj kao da sam gledala vec milion puta

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  Review by Mark ★★★

  Sometimes, an entire film can be carried on an extremely specific, keenly observed and captured emotion. So it goes with Victim, which expresses the perpetual queasy uneasiness of lying, with Irina watching her lie spin sickeningly out of her control. It's so clearly a function of the editing, cinematography and performances that I can't really imagine what this would have looked like on the page. The genuinely disturbing emotional effect of feeling trapped in their lie really is the entirety of the film.

  The aspect of the film which is less effectively developed is the impact of race and nationality. Undercurrents of prejudice and abuse towards both the Ukrainian immigrants and the gypsy population are bubbling up throughout, but the implications of a grassroots social movement being co-opted by either political special interest groups or violent bigots for their own gains is largely left unexamined.

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  Review by Levente Nagy Borús ★★★

  Subtle as a sledgehammer but considering the times we are living right now, we don’t have much room for subtlety anyway, so it doesn’t break (nor make) the movie.

  The crux of the film is that you have to get over the banality of the inciting incident. Once you are are able to suspend your disbelief, Obeť offers a rather interesting moral dilemma that takes place in a society that it is at its boiling point— unfortunately, in the end the movie doesn’t have the courage to stick the landing in a way that could provoke a meaningful conversation about the topics it works hard to depict.

  Also, the style the events were presented looks good for the first 20 minutes but after that, the blocking becomes stale and actually limits deeper character/theme exploration.

  Directors, don’t fall in love with your unnecessarily long tracking shots!

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  Review by Márkó Sztepanov ★★★

  A Not Okay cseh kisreál kistesója.

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  Review by Tereza ★★★½

  Pickles and vodka are the new coffee and cukroví.

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  Review by ronkao ★★★

  「為成為合法公民，所以先成為受害者？」

  低彩高飽的質感冷色系，雙線敘事流暢地交錯，很舒服的看完。這樣移民與群體衝突框架的變化，讓人想起《誰是外來者（Exile）》，它巧妙玩轉歧視與內化歧視的視野；而《我是被害者》從族群對立的追查，轉移至越拍越響亮政治之荒謬。

  結尾在視覺上概念上皆呈現得漂亮，為看似多元兼容的國度裡，埋下對立的隱憂。這部片雲淡風輕，雖圓謊與移民有道德上的矛盾，但這個衝突並未轉化成具體的力道，要說諷刺，諷刺的點也並無聚焦，以致此作之上位概念未能上升至更高層次。角色也在高度框架化的情節裡長得不是太出來，於是順順看過去，沒有留下太深刻的情感。