86
Metascore
15 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100IndieWireChristian BlauveltIndieWireChristian BlauveltThere are many times in Hogir Hirori’s Sabaya, an anxiety-filled potboiler of a documentary about the fight to rescue enslaved girls from ISIS, where one might wonder how they pulled it off. That feeling is quickly followed by relief that they did.
- 100CineVueMatthew AndersonCineVueMatthew AndersonSabaya does not shy away from the horrendous circumstances it finds, exhibiting bitterly raw emotion, fear and heartbreak very frankly.
- 100Film ThreatAlex SavelievFilm ThreatAlex SavelievWith unparalleled verisimilitude, Hirori captures both the helplessness and the resolve it takes to see past it, to hold on to a glimmer of hope, faint as it may be. Sabaya will leave you scarred, its images scorched forever into your mind.
- Tense and gripping, Hogir Hirori’s documentary Sabaya never positions itself as a thriller. There’s no need. Barring a few cards of scene-setting exposition, this vital dispatch embeds viewers with a rescue operation in the Middle East, and does so with a degree of first-person access that’s not just instantly bold: it’s nerve-janglingly scary.
- 90VarietyJessica KiangVarietyJessica KiangSabaya is remarkable not least for how cleanly Hirori excises himself from it, careful to not get in between the viewer and these devastating stories with their 10 different flavors of heroism.
- 90The New York TimesDevika GirishThe New York TimesDevika GirishMahmud and Ziyad, volunteers at the Yazidi Home Center in Syria, will make several more such trips over the course of the film, and hundreds more after the cameras stop rolling. Their task is enormous, and it demands a stoicism that Hirori’s intrepid, immersive filmmaking mirrors.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterInkoo KangThe Hollywood ReporterInkoo KangWith the risks to both the filmmaker and his subjects on full display, it’s an impressively exciting and strikingly novel approach in chronicling a humanitarian crisis that has yet to receive its due.
- 75Slant MagazineMark JenkinsSlant MagazineMark JenkinsThe film’s terseness could make it too cryptic for some, but that doesn’t blunt the impact of its most visceral or tender moments.
- 67The A.V. ClubCarlos AguilarThe A.V. ClubCarlos AguilarAs a journalistic depiction of the rescue operations as they happen, Sabaya brims with heart-pounding tension and immediacy. But given the access obtained and Hirori’s connection to the people and the land where this grim chapter in modern history is unfolding, the superficial handling of pivotal aspects of the story is disappointing.