Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

Most political films involving children are vicious or sentimental. The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, set in 1970 when Brazil was under the military dictatorship of General Emilio Medici, is neither.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Pulls you into a well-observed world and its characters.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

A sweet, intelligent little movie.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

This sweet, yet unsentimental film is about growing up, losing innocence, and longing for a place, and people, to call home.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

What makes this film appealingly honest are its details, not its grand events.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

The movie is stolen by 11-year-old Daniela Piepszyk as tomboy Hanna, one of Mauro's new friends. She has a face in a million.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Hamburger's earnest effort offers interesting perspectives on Jewish life in South America's most populous city as well as the fate of political dissidents during a particularly dark period of Brazil's recent past.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

The filmmakers succeed with an unexpected ending. It's as fresh as everything in the movie, which turns out to be about so much more than one youngster's resilience.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

It really only comes alive in its shots of people in the neighborhood sitting around their television sets. What we're really talking about here is a problem in scope. In Hamburger's film, the world is no bigger than a cup.

Variety Deborah Young

Sensitive, delicate and involving.

Village Voice Jean Oppenheimer

This warmly engaging film benefits from its understated approach (it suggests rather than spells out the political turmoil), and its light, comedic tone never mitigates the drama of the central story.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The performances are charming and convincing, and Mr. Joelsas does a good job of conveying Mauro’s loneliness and confusion as well as his playfulness. The Year My Parents Went on Vacation may not be terribly fresh or original, but its warm, sweet, nostalgic tone is hard to dislike.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

This nuanced coming-of-age drama by Cao Hamburger exudes warmth without getting mired in nostalgia.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Generally, this writer-director is too sensitive for his own good. He never lets his boy-hero lose himself fully in his new world - or relinquish hope that his parents will return.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Writer-director Cao Hamburger works well with child actors and has a spare, unforced style. But too much of this film is desultory and thin.

Miami Herald Marta Barber

One true gem is Daniela Piepszyk, Mauro's teen neighbor, who is a fireball and the leader of the neighborhood gang of boys. You can't take your eyes off her.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A sweet and somber film that works hard to overcome its limitations.

Washington Post John Anderson

What The Year My Parents Went on Vacation seems to be about, in the end, is big-time sport as the opiate of the masses.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

A curiously unaffecting amalgam of the archetypal coming-of-age tale, here twinned to "outsider" religious overtones (in this case São Paulo's Orthodox Jewish community) and a small but deadly dose of uneasy political melodrama.