Synopsis
On the brink of civil war breaking out in an African country, a French woman struggles to save her floundering coffee plantation.
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Cast
- Isabelle HuppertMaria Vial
- Christophe LambertAndré Vial
- Nicolas DuvauchelleManuel Vial
- Isaach De BankoléBoxer
- William NadylamChérif
- Michel SuborHenri Vial
- Adèle AdoLucie
- Ali BarkaiJeep
- Thomas Dumerchez
Recommendations
- 100
Philadelphia Inquirer
While White Material is very much the story of this one woman, it is also a story of postcolonial Africa, a place where Europeans staked their claim, and where disorder and destruction upended everything. A mournful, frightening, powerful film. - 88
Chicago Sun-Times
This is a beautiful, puzzling film. The enigmatic quality of Huppert's performance draws us in. - 85
NPR
Yet in the end it's less the climactic madness and mayhem in White Material that sear the memory than it is the silent, balletic creep of child soldiers, grabbed out of school and sent with machetes and rifles through a forest to exact revenge for decades of repression. - 80
Chicago Reader
This haunting drama by Claire Denis burns with a mute fear and rage at the ongoing atrocities in central Africa. - 75
San Francisco Chronicle
Denis' viewpoint and sympathies are sophisticated, complex and humane. - 75
Washington Post
A lean and hungry thing. With the sparest of storytelling, the French filmmaker ("35 Shots of Rum") devours her audience, swallowing us up in a yarn that is as enigmatic as it is engrossing. - 75
Boston Globe
What sustains the film is its tone of almost hallucinatory foreboding. White Material isn't about the calm before the storm but the seconds before the deluge. - 75
Chicago Tribune
Its dramatic vexations are at war with Denis' prodigious visual skill. And the fight, ultimately, rewards the viewer.
