Beneath the Harvest Sky 2013

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: Teenagers in a dead-end town aren't exactly a trailblazing topic. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Beneath the Harvest Sky offers a heartbreakingly authentic, vividly realized account of adolescent frustration and yearning. Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club: Directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly are documentarians making their fiction debut, and they pack the movie with seemingly authentic, nitty-gritty details about life in the potato country of far northern Maine. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: While the climax of Beneath the Harvest Sky is a jumble of crosscutting, thunderstorms, and an inconveniently collapsing house, the movie never loses the pulse of people and tragedies it knows too well. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The languid pace effectively communicates the characters' crushing boredom, yet the dramatic interest never flags. Read more

Boyd van Hoeij, Hollywood Reporter: The film offers a solid sense of place and Gaudet and Pullapilly expertly use the jittery camerawork of Steven Calitri to infuse the proceedings with a nervy energy. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: For all its missteps, the film feels authentic. Through thick and thin, it stubbornly maintains a thorny integrity. Read more

Globe and Mail: Performances are strong, if a bit Method-y, and camera work from veteran documentary filmmakers Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly is top notch, though the schematic plot feels over-familiar. Read more

Nick Schager, Village Voice: A film that ultimately comes across like the formulaic stepson of Frozen River, Winter's Bone, and countless other rundown-rural-community character studies. Read more

Zachary Wigon, Village Voice: Gaudet and Pullapilly have a background in documentaries, and there's a convincing naturalism to their storytelling. Read more