Three Minutes: A Lengthening
Super LTD | Release Date: August 19, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
88
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerSep 26, 2022
The film medium has often been discussed in academic terms as a vehicle to contain the passage of time. But “Three Minutes” does much more than that. Although it raises all sorts of issues about the nature of the film image and how it can affect us, it is also the least theoretical of movies. We are bearing witness. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 24, 2022
Three Minutes: A Lengthening unspools like a not-so-minor miracle. It’s a work of poetry, power and ruminative grace. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzAug 22, 2022
Bianca Stigter's documentary Three Minutes: A Lengthening is a great film about filmmaking and a quietly devastating memorial for lives long gone. Read full review
91
The PlaylistJoe BlessingJul 26, 2022
A poetic meditation on film, history, and loss, Three Minutes – A Lengthening gives a glimpse into a lost world and then unpacks just how much can be learned from that brief fragment. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangAug 18, 2022
Three Minutes: A Lengthening is a snapshot, a memorial, a knotty philosophical detective story and a devastating account of Nazi atrocities. It’s also an extended rumination on the illusory, entropic nature of the cinematic medium itself. Read full review
90
The New York TimesBeatrice LoayzaAug 18, 2022
“Three Minutes” is more than a documentary about the Holocaust — it is an investigative drama, a meditation on the ethics of moving images and a ghost story about people who might be forgotten should we take those images for granted. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterCaryn JamesJul 26, 2022
An eloquent meditation on loss, memory and how film can shape them. Read full review
90
VarietyAlissa SimonJul 26, 2022
Stigter’s method is simultaneously creative and forensic, but never sentimental. Working with a digitized copy that bears the blemishes left by the deterioration of the original celluloid, she conjures up exactly what she declares in the subtitle: a lengthening. Read full review
88
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckAug 18, 2022
At the end, one feels gratitude not only for Stigter’s painstaking work, but to author Kurtz and of course his grandfather, just a man with a camera whose fleeting footage is a powerful response to those who intended to eradicate the existence of these people and millions like them. Read full review
85
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaJan 27, 2022
Three Minutes – A Lengthening is not a ghost story, but it still feels haunting. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubJordan HoffmanAug 17, 2022
The imagery runs backward and forward, gets freeze-framed, goes through different filters, and is blown up, reduced, diced, and re-assembled like playing cards. But director Bianca Stigter fully commits to this formalist dare—and it pays off tremendously. Read full review
83
IndieWireNicholas BarberJul 26, 2022
It grips the attention from start to finish. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyDec 2, 2022
Between Kurtz and Stigter – a Dutch journalist who authored Atlas Of An Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945 – no stone is left unturned. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 22, 2022
If Stigter’s film is at times somber, it’s more often ruefully poetic. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 16, 2022
The impression “Three Minutes” leaves is that it’s more probing than moving, more of a mystery to be unraveled than an emotional journey into who and what were lost. It’s still quite worthwhile as history and as a meditation on tragedy and the nature of filmed memory. Read full review
75
The Film StageDan MeccaFeb 3, 2022
Too often do we take for granted the miraculousness of the moving image. Stigter’s creative extension and exploration of Kurtz’s film reminds us. What can we glean from three minutes of film shot in 1938? Plenty. Read full review
70
Little White LiesMarina AshiotiDec 10, 2022
Three Minutes culminates in a contemplation of its central paradox: “The absence in the presence”. It provides a vital memorial to the people whose lives have been lost to time, revealing the significance of preserving film as much as preserving history. Read full review
65
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanAug 17, 2022
The truth is that even at 71 minutes much of this film feels padded, as though Stigter couldn’t let go of the subject but also wasn’t sure how to expand it further. Because Kurtz’s concept is so moving, however, the film retains much of the power he brought to his book. Read full review
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