Quotes
“Mystical, earthy vision of life’s cycle…The most gifted and original of New Zealand’s filmmakers…”
Kevin Thomas – The Times
“Ward brings to his story a stunning double vision.…a unique work by a major talent…”
Los Angeles Times
“One of the year’s most distinctive films…”
Portland Oregonian
“A magical mystery tour-de-force……a polished gem…”
The Boston Herald
“Deep, dark, hauntingly poetic……a milestone, marking [Ward] as a figure of importance…”
The Boston Globe
“Vigil is the strongest, most personally inspired film to come out of New Zealand to date. In form and content, and in its detailed and immaculate concern with visual imagery, it establishes in a single blow the place of its creator, 27-year-old Vincent Ward as a unique film talent.”
Variety Magazine
“An astonishing film”
Cinema Paris
“It reminds us of cinema’s great power to excite, surprise and conjure up unique imagined worlds .. A work of astonishing, original force – The most distinctive New Zealand film to ever reach Britain.”
The Guardian
“Vigil immerses the viewer in pure cinematic magic, a rare thing in our jaded day.”
Los Angeles Herald
“Powerful, parochial and poetic….A singularly ambitious and resonant film, indicating a new maturity in New Zealand cinema”
City Limits Magazine
“One of those rare and beautiful films that’s unique and unforgettable.”
Hollywood Reporter
“The real joy of Vigil is that every shot and every inch of the soundtrack testifies to that kind of care that only a filmmaker with a genuine vision can bring to the cinema.”
Timeout
“Vincent Ward imbues his feature film directorial debut with a hard to get right sense of mystical naturalism”
The Daily Mail
“A film of elemental beauty and growing tension as a young girl on the brink of coming of age, resists the presence of a stoic handyman who threatens to take the place of her dead father, a shepherd in a remote, rugged region of New Zealand. Superb!”
Kevin Thomas – Los Angeles Times
” Vincent Ward and his young star have penetrated deep into their subject and mined something hauntingly unexpected. In Vigil, Ward gives us images that play like blasted poetry.”
Hal Hinson – The Washington Post