Here are review links for this film submitted by our members:
- Chris Barsanti @ PopMatters
- Excerpt: Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s exuberantly defiant debut film follows five sisters who fight sexist traditions in a remote Turkish village.
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: The foreignness of the setting is taken over by the relatability of the human spirit and how it is just as likely to rise above as to be crushed in ways equally impressive. Ergüven’s blend of the familiar and the unfamiliar produces a potent concoction, both unique and universal.
- [New – 1/28/16] | Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An astonishing Turkish drama about the oppression of five spirited young women whose sexuality frightens the Muslim elders in the community.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The abuse and oppression in “Mustang” are infuriating, but the film is fueled by girl power.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: As infuriating and destructive as this scenario is, there is something undeniably joyous in the fight…
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Golden Globe and Oscar best foreign language film nominee, ‘Mustang,’ is a must-see portrait of five teenaged girls who are forced to rebel in the face of false accusations in a small Turkish town.
- [New – 1/28/16] | Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: We feel the forcible pull of a screenplay, co-written by the director and Alice Winocour, overstating its case. However as the debut feature from an up-and-coming filmmaker, there’s still a lot to admire here.
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Mustang is Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s slightly autobiographical story about her experiences as a young girl in Turkey. It’s a not so sly middle finger aimed at Turkey’s recent lurch to the conservative right under the AKP party’s propaganda machine about a woman’s place in society.
- Steve Katz @ The Alpha Primitive
- Excerpt: Even more powerful, though, is the film’s final scene, a perfectly calibrated outburst of emotion from a moment that does not telegraph itself, creating a lovely surprise that shouldn’t really be a surprise at all, a reminder of the true potential for human kindness.
- Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews
- Excerpt: Told from the youngest sibling’s point-of-view in order to showcase how universal their oppression is no matter age down the line from Sonay to Nur, Mustang toes the line of entertainingly resonate coming-of-age tale and dramatically important exposé on life behind closed doors of a ritualistic tradition stripping away the rights of children. For every comically wonderful instance of Grandma or Aunt Emine (Aynur Komecoglu) covering up the girls’ missteps is one of Erol’s violent temper or the community’s side-eyed glares.
- Courtney Small @ Cinema Axis
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
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