Metacritic reviews

The director manages to maintain a steady streak of grim humor. Extreme repression can be bleakly funny in its idiocy, when viewed from a distance.

This remarkably revealing and timely film, in which the depiction of pain and sorrow is suffused with a sense of beauty and a graceful, flowing style, more than lives up to glowing advance notices.

Watching this film wakes you up; it is a window on an Iran and an Afghanistan we should have taken account of long ago -- seen though a master's eye, felt through a poet's touch.

Kandahar found itself in real-life controversy last December, when one of its actors was accused of murder.

Kandahar does not provide deeply drawn characters, memorable dialogue or an exciting climax. Its traffic is in images.

A visually exalting, emotionally horrifying view of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.

While it's often harsh in style and melancholy in subject, Kandahar taps into veins of humor and compassion as well.

With its lyrical vision of oppression, looks, if anything, milder now than it might have before the war.

Unfortunately, you are often distractingly aware that you are watching re-enactments of real events.

Kandahar feels like a Magritte painting rendered in sand tones, and your eyes are drawn to the screen. There aren't enough of these moments, though, and Mr. Makhmalbaf lessens their power by repeating them.