64
Metascore
5 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80VarietyRonnie ScheibVarietyRonnie ScheibHungarian schoolteacher Gyongi Mago's campaign to raise awareness of her hometown's once-vibrant, now conspicuously absent Jewish population is captured in the superior docu There Was Once ...
- 70Los Angeles TimesKevin ThomasLos Angeles TimesKevin ThomasMuch in this wholly absorbing and poignant documentary is familiar from numerous previous Holocaust accounts, but Mago and her quiet sense of moral obligation provides a fresh perspective.
- 63Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerSlant MagazineAndrew SchenkerA not insignificant act of oral history, Gabor Kalman's There Was Once… makes for considerably less compelling cinema whenever it turns its focus away from the talking-head testimony of the Holocaust survivors of Kalosca, Hungary.
- 60Village VoiceVillage VoiceThe neo-Nazi sentiment in Hungary today is touched on most acutely when it mars the memorial that finally brings the survivors home.
- Ah, well. "There Was Once ...may feel like sober, do-gooder public television, but it has integrity, recording one specific town's slice of living history. Simple as that, it's a worthy document.