Hard Goodbyes: My Father
  • Release Date: Sep 16, 2005
Hard Goodbyes: My Father Image
Metascore
66 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 12 Critics What's this?

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  • Summary: 10-year-old Elias, a boy living in Athens, makes a pact with his father to watch on television man's first landing on the moon. The two regale each other with stories of Jules Verne and flights of the imagination. They are adventurers and explorers. But chocolate bars left by a father gone on too many business trips are counted, while the countdown to the moonlanding has already begun. The year is 1969. A spaceship takes off, and man soon takes leave of planet earth. And so does Elias' father. It is the imagination and their shared love of storytelling that allow Elias to transcend the unimaginable. (Sipapu Films)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 12
  3. Negative: 0 out of 12
  1. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Mark Sells
    80
    Part of what makes the film engaging is the carefully nuanced performances Panayotopoulou gets from her actors. In particular, Giorgos Karayannis.
  2. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    75
    Like the moving 1999 American "A Walk on the Moon," with Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen, Hard Goodbyes juxtaposes a family crisis with the excitement of the period before and during Neil Armstrong's 1969 moonwalk.
  3. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    75
    Hard Goodbyes could easily have been maudlin, but isn't. Credit an adult script and realistic acting, especially by Giorgos Karayannis as Elias.
  4. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    60
    Panayotopoulou's background in photography shows in the way she lets her chiaroscuro lighting mirror her characters' emotions. It also shows in the still-life quality that Hard Goodbyes never quite gets beyond.

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