Pray for Us: reviews

What the critics say average 5.7 from 16 outlets

• 8.0 FotogramasLaura Pérez Monzón builds a forceful drama of broken adolescence that is also a testimony to an institution with inquisitorial overtones that survived in Spain well into democracy. Read
• 8.0 CinemaníaNuria Vidal As he did with 'quinqui' cinema in The Laws of the Border, Monzón revisits and updates a certain kind of 1970s genre film, helped by a group of young actresses who bring back a reality that is, sadly, all too recent, hidden and forgotten. Read
• 8.0 La RazónSergi Sánchez It is, in short, a more than timely film at a moment when no fundamental right seems guaranteed, however much dictatorships may now belong to old newsreels. Read
• 8.0 El EconomistaLucas del Barco Monzón doesn't just entertain: he also shakes consciences, sheds light on wounds and gives a voice back to the women who were condemned to silence.
• 7.8 HobbyConsolasRaquel Hernández Luján Protest cinema that recalls tragic episodes from our recent history, with good production values and very well chosen casting. It shocks and moves you, and it's astonishing how close in time it all is.
• 6.0 La VanguardiaJordi Batlle Caminal The wish to please a wide audience turns into a certain black-and-white thinking at times, but the staging is solid, the pacing controlled and the images show a flawless savoir faire. Read
• 6.0 El MundoLuis Martínez Either way, what remains is a tremendous film, in the broadest and most outsized sense of the word, that puts its finger on the wound exactly where it bleeds most: a memory that was wiped out. Read
• 6.0 CineuropaAlfonso Rivera The film not only portrays the abuse, humiliation and degradation carried out with impunity inside, crushing young lives that needed to fly high and free, it also reflects the oppressive, fascist society that tolerated and encouraged institutions as atrocious as this one. Read
• 6.0 SensaCineAndrea Zamora What Pray for Us does manage is to avoid tired melodrama and build claustrophobia with a setting halfway between Catholic school and prison. The feelings it needs to create, it gets across. Pray for Us commits a few sins, yes, but it doesn't need to go to confession either. Read
• 6.0 El ConfidencialMarta Medina Pray for Us is an example of contemporary classical Spanish cinema, a well told story (perhaps too long) that goes for effective, narrative staging and good performances, but steers away from the formal and tonal ambition of new Spanish cinema. Read
• 5.0 Otros CinesVioleta Kovacsics The cruelty of the system is plain to see, but in that very excess of force it loses a political dimension that Monzón knew how to handle in films like Cell 211.
• 4.0 El PaísJavier Ocaña But it prefers surface and archetype (the good young nun, the abusive father, the handsome coal boy…) to a complex, far-reaching indictment of the whole religious, social and political system that controlled women. Read
• 4.0 ABCOti Rodríguez Marchante A film about a distant, reprehensible, shameful and sadly real chapter of our past, but dressed in apparently conventional clothes. Read
• 3.0 AceprensaAna Sánchez de la Nieta The problem with Pray for Us is that its good intentions and its commitment to not repeating the worst of our history are built on the worst decisions you can make when making a film. Read
• 3.0 El Séptimo ArteWanchope Soulless, structural filmmaking where, despite the efforts of Zoe Bonafonte and Manuela Calle, everything feels like the overly automated mechanics of an artifice. Read
• 2.0 Decine21José María Aresté What this film offers is a crude caricature, not very well told, which of course won no prize at all. Read