An elegantly-woven portrait of a family in crisis… an intelligent human drama.
SCREEN DAILY
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Smoothly crafted. Strong perfs by Herfurth and especially Bierbichler create plausible characters and an intense mood.
VARIETY

The magic of A Year Ago in Winter is its ability to dabble in stereotype without becoming overwhelmed, and its adroitness in exploring the external impact that suicide has on the living without extending naïve answers or solutions. Categorization is thankfully eluded with skill regardless of each character’s desire to simplify complex, unanswerable questions with adage… It is consistently powerful, challenging and unafraid to wear its heart on its sleeve… Caroline Link has constructed a heartbreaking and sincerely thoughtful film without any unnecessary pretence or contrived resolutions. This one deserves to be seen.
EXCLAIM CANADA
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Measured and restrained yet with surprising grace notes, A Year Ago In Winter is an elegant and insightful drama about loss.
NOW MAGAZINE
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A touching tale of a family coping with a horrible tragedy in an entirely novel way…Painting and poetry, music and melancholy breathe out of the frames in a smoothly crafted work that describes and dissects the angst of a Bavarian family….Link has a good cast. Herfurth plays the striking beauty tormented by the loss of her brother whom she secretly adored, while Bierbichler is extremely effective as a man wounded by his own troubled relationships and who feels reinvigorated by his attractive young subject….the film is controlled and intense, and lensed marvelously
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
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Well-executed, especially when it showcases such a terrific lead performance…Karoline Herfurth gets to run the old Timothy Hutton gauntlet of vulnerability, and hits credible emotional marks at every turn. Link’s direction strives for powerful effects…quietly self-negating professionalism
EYE WEEKLY

A moving film about coping with death and loss
THE SEOUL TIMES

Shattering
THE GUARDIAN

A respectable effort in every meaning of the word…Link manages to infuse it with some real power
MOVIE MARTYR

It is most probably her best scenic and narrative piece of work to date. An intense, urgent, haunting drama…a subtle, soft, positively unspectacular glimpse into the lives of a family that has been traumatised, paralysed and petrified by the death of a loved one
GOETHE INSTITUT
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