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Life, Above All
Directed by
Oliver Schmitz
PG-13
2011
1h 40m
[Drama](/on-demand/category/drama)
7.1
82%
82%
6.5
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A touching mother-daughter relationship that reflects the modern South Africa.
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Life, Above All Ratings & Reviews
National Newspaper Publishers Association
Dwight Brown
The film plays out like a modern allegory with strong life lessons. This an emotionally satisfying and cleansing first-hand experience about that scourge called AIDS.
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
What makes it bearable but also beautiful and stirring is the central performance by the preteen, first-time actor Khomotso Manyaka.
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
"Life, Above All" earns the tears it inspires. The film is about deep human emotions, evoked with sympathy and love.
Arizona Republic
Randy Cordova
Perseverance is the theme of "Life, Above All," a drama that is deeply affecting, if also overwhelmingly bleak.
Seattle Times
Tom Keogh
There is less in-your-face grit in Cape Town-born director Oliver Schmitz's vision for this film than there is a careful pacing of somber revelations.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Joe Williams
In such a bleak story, the redemptive ending seems rushed and unconvincing, but director Oliver Schmitz has sent us a timely dispatch from a forgotten corner of the world that is honest above all.
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
"Life, Above All," a deeply moving South African drama about AIDS and ostracism, manages to be, paradoxically, both austere and uplifting.
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
If [its] allegorical underpinnings blur the film's edges, the performances bring it back into focus.
Los Angeles Times
Sheri Linden
Manyaka gives the character a gaze so true it could only open hearts and minds.
Slant Magazine
Ilya Tovbis
It has its heart in the right place, but it quickly begins to bleed at the edges, and soon these edges come to dominate the film's core.
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
Nicely splits the difference between ethnographic realism and melodramatic uplift.
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
The fluidity of Schmitz's technique reflects a world in which tragedy and uplift are inextricably commingled.
leonardmaltin.com
Leonard Maltin
One of the year's most striking and memorable performances is given by a 12-year-old girl who never set foot in front of a camera before she was chosen to play the leading role in Life, Above All. This moving adaptation of Allan Stratton's...
NPR
Ella Taylor
The script groans beneath a mass of symbolic winking and declamatory exposition that has the unfortunate effect of turning the villagers into credulous simpletons, ready to blow with any wind that carries them.
New York Daily News
Joe Neumaier
The movie stares clear-eyed at a world where any kind of hope seems like a dream.
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
A downer that too often resorts to melodrama.
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
This is a modest film, and an affecting one.
New York Times
Manohla Dargis
Does something that few painful dramas accomplish: It tells a tale of resilience without platitudes about the triumph of the human spirit or without false promises about an unclouded future.
TIME Magazine
Mary Corliss
The director and his splendid cast assure that this tale about a strong little girl fighting to keep her family alive and together has both high art and a big heart, audience appeal and gut impact.
IndieWire
Eric Kohn
Although loaded with dramatic consequence, "Life, Above All" is slight.
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