Lilya 4-Ever

After making such a brilliant splash with his first two films -- Show Me Love and Together -- the Swedish director Lukas Moodysson seems to dry up in Lilya 4-ever.

The social questions it raises are real enough; its sentimentality is what makes one doubt Moodysson is Ingmar Bergman's heir. Not by a long sob.

[Moodysson] dives into the soul of a 16-year-old Estonian girl and tears you apart.

A wrenching feel-bad movie graced by a luminous central performance.

It is Akinshina's presence and performance that make the pedestrian story heart-wrenching.

The film left me completely devastated and Oksana Akinshina’s performance is absolutely heartbreaking....“Lilya 4-ever” was so powerful it helped reshape laws within society. This is as important and urgent as cinema gets.


Lilya 4-Ever gives us a glorious, heart-wrenching debut performance in the lead, as auspicious as any in the history of cinema."

A harsh dramatic brew, Lilya 4-Ever is a monumental, abrasive document of a young life flushed down the drain; it's an exceptional, deafening humanitarian alarm that will continue to overwhelm and outrage for years to come.

So seamless and relentlessly powerful that the social-realism of not just this film, but the genre itself, is pushed to its limit. Acting and action that rips so deeply, you'll feel you've got to do more than simply watch.