★★★★
'The lovely, low-key films of the Belgian director Bas Devos have deservedly gatherd an appreciative following...
Nothing is overtly stated - this is a Bas Devos film afetr all. But the details - a small gift (of soup, what else?) and the private smile that greets it - speaks volumes.
Wendy Ide, The Observer
'...the camera alternates between contemplative statis and measured tracking shots following the films' protagonists - as in the not dissimilar Bela Tarr and Alan Clarke.
...it offers unforeseen pleasures for those minded to look a little more closely.'
Michael Brooke, Sight & Sound
★★★★★
Here, Bas Devos' poetic, gentle meditation on the connections formed between two lonely people, who are both liminal within their respective contexts, struck such a melancholic chord with me. An intensely cinematic mise-en-scen...trancendental in its deliberation and its sincere storytelling.'
Benjamin Poole, The Movie Waffler
‘A gorgeous study of fragile human bonds...
The pair meet by chance and their shared sense of Otherness, both as immigrants but also as people with a sense of awe for what is often overlooked, binds them together...
Light on plot, at times this film feels so slight that it might just slip through your fingers. And yet its ethereality is what makes it enchanting. Devos blurs the boundaries between dreams and reality, juxtaposing moments of magic realism with merely the kind of awe you can experience in everyday life if you give yourself the time to look.'
Laura Venning, Little White Lies
★★★★
‘Belgian director Bas Devos’s gentle, delicate and quietly beguiling movie, a prize winner last year in Berlin, is about love and fate. It crept up on me at its own measured walking pace – and it incidentally has the best and cleverest last line of any film I have seen this year.
A little gem.’
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
‘Here is a delicate and mediative piece of filmmaking. Shot on 16mm and in the boxy Academy ratio, it encourages viewers to dwell upon the Edenic images of the natural world it conjures in bracing contrast to its city views.’
Tom Dawson, Total Film
‘It may be little over eighty minutes long and barely possess a plot, but Belgian writer-director Bas Devos’s picture contains multitudes. Shots of trains and moss elegantly illustrate the twin themes of transience, and the desire to connect and put down roots.’
David Willoughby, Crack magazine
★★★★
‘Bas Devos’s Here uses a rootless émigré as a vehicle to consider the importance of human interactions and connections. A short and slow-burner of a film, this 80-odd minute romance brings a lovelorn melancholy, so thickly laid you chew through it.Dan Carrier, Camden New Journal/Islington Tribune
‘Reminiscent of the Dardennes naturally, a smidgen of the methodical technique of Tarkovsky and yet something of its own making and minute uniqueness. This film is about connection and finding a place in this world that you can call home, when faraway from the first one you were born into; it will remind you of films you have seen before and yet is unlike anything you may have seen before.’Jamie Garwood, Chatter Box Films
'Devos' profound yet miraculously weightless feature. It peers head-on at life's surprises, devastating and precious alike. And yet, while it touches the heart and lovingly knocks you sideways, there's nothing precious about it.'
Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter
★★★★1/2
‘Lovers of minimalist cinema should welcome this poetic Belgian drama. Bas Devos the writer/director of Here can be accounted a real artist, a man with a vision of his own... and he has given us a film that bears the stamp of a talented and individual artist.’
Mansel Stimpson, Film Review Daily
'A sublime look at dreamers contemplating their place in the world. Here, present this theme with a modesty that seems to radiate from Stefan himself, offering his world to us through rich, dreamy imagery and with an endearing simplicity.'
Pat Brown, Slant magazine
"Other festival must-sees include “Here,” Bas Devos’s delicate, gracefully paced tale of two strangers — a construction worker and a botanist who studies moss — as they first drift into each other’s orbit on a moody day in Brussels. Not much happens except that everything does: life, labor, perhaps love. With an eye for beauty and little chatter, Devos makes his characters come expressively into view as he follows each separately and then together during their chance encounter in some verdant woods. Every moment signifies in this lovely, unexpected movie, starting with the opening image of a tall building framed by lush greenery."
Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
"A chance encounter changes two people’s lives in Here, the remarkable fourth feature from Belgian writer-director Bas Devos. This deceptively slender tale about a Romanian construction worker and a Belgian-Chinese bryologist (an expert in the study of moss and lichen) keeps its principal characters separate for most of the film’s 84-minute running time. But with gorgeous precision, Devos slowly brings these mismatched individuals into each other’s orbit, in the process crafting a quietly overwhelming study of human connection and our relationship with the natural world. Hardly a conventional love story, but achingly tender nonetheless, Here is fully present and dazzlingly alive."
Tim Grierson, Screen International
“Here” manages to present some of the most striking moving images in recent memory by leaning into the same minute details that its protagonist struggles to recognize in his own daily life. Devos’ soft directorial touch elevates what could have been a simple short film into a reflection on the small joys we choose to miss that packs a punch far greater than its runtime.
Cristian Zilko, IndieWire
"Compared to the more fragmented, mosaic-like narratives of Violet and Hellhole, Here is a linear experience; Stefan and Shuxiu’s storylines unfold along separate tracks until a chance encounter at her family restaurant and then another in the woods where she searches for mosses. But the plot, such as it is, remains resolutely low stakes. The incidents paving the couple’s wanderings (a broken car, a torrential summer storm) are almost the stuff of fairy tales, and the film itself seems to hang in a dreamlike realm for long passages, which graces its most on-the-nose associationswith an ethereal beauty."
Leonardo Goi, Reverse Shot
"For anyone keeping tabs on Bas Devos’ career, it’s notable that the drama of his latest film Here is set in motion by something as benign as a pot of soup. A charming portrait with a flânuerial spirit, the film follows a Brussels-based Romanian construction worker who, having decided to move home, cooks what’s left in his fridge, packages it up, then gifts it to family, friends and––much later––a Belgian-Chinese woman doing a PhD in moss. She is played by Liyo Gang and he is played by Stefan Gota. It’s 81 minutes long, has relatively little dialogue, and tugs the heartstrings in all the best ways. It might be the most benevolent film of this year."
Rory O'Connor, The Film Stage
"Breathtaking ode to nature and human connection.
A cinematic antidote to an era marked by dwindling attention spans and human detachment, offering a poignant reflection on the power of living in the moment."
Martin Kudlac, Screen Anarchy
"With Here, his fourth feature film and winner of the Encounters and the Fipresci Award at the 73rd Berlinale, the Belgian director Bas Devos creates a luminous, delicate, and subtle film that inspires awe. Through meticulous framing, the ability to build a narrative through ellipsis, and a sense of real time, Devos brilliantly explores the wonder of the ordinary…
In a simple and unspectacular way, Here’s story captivates us with its peaceful pace, the gentleness and benevolence of its characters, their care for each other and their interest for the world they are living in…
Blending lyricism with a firm grasp of reality, Devos strives for the essential. With his elegant, poised scenes shot in 4:3 format and a similarly accurate soundscape, he draws attention to the intensity of each and every moment, its complexity and frail beauty. Playful and light-hearted, the film’s ending hints at the beginning of a beautiful love story that will stay with us for a long time."
Maria Giovanna Vagenas, Senses of Cinema
"Strikingly distinct in style. That signature blend of ultra-realism with a dash of fantasy is very much intact...It's a quiet, romantic whisper of a film that will vibe hard with those who can get on it wavelength. Gorgeously lensed by Grimm Vandkerckhove, HERE is visual storytelling at its most instictive and tender. It reminds you that not everything needs to be reasoned or even named. As illustrated with wordless perfection by the film's beautiful final shot, this holds true especially in matters of the heart."
Zhuo-Ning Su, Awards Daily
"An incredibly wonderful, lovely film"
Alex Heeney, Seventh Row (podcast)
"With HERE, Devos adds another spare but memorable fourth feature to his archive that started with VIOLET, HELLHOLE and GHOST TROPIC."
Filmuforia
"Devos' refreshing vision offers clarity for an audience in its inviting presentation, suggesting that serenity needn't only come from an excursion, but could be a way of life."
Stphen Saito, The Moveable Feast
"That's how HERE captivates in moments, stringing together a loose narrative collection of encouragements to open our eyes, to see the world and the potential of its embrace."
International Cinephile Society
"A poetic, highly pictorial, urban tableaux."
Cineuropa
'Critic's Pick'
'When Stefan first encounters Shuxiu, he is sitting, soaked, in a Chinese restaurant. What will become of them isn’t the purview of the film, or its point, exactly. And, yet, in this painstakingly muted, luminously photographed testimony to connection, nothing much and everything happens — or could.'
Lisa Kennedy, New York Times
'A small, tiny, almost-perfect litle film.'
This is a film that's attuned to both the earthly concerns with money and work and the more ineffable but no less pressing urge to belong. From a lesser director, its oneiric detours...might have ome across as contrived. In Devos's hands, they are the culmination of a jorney that began long before Here: a portrait of a city as a breathing organism, no less alive and mysterious than those who roam it.
Leonardo Goi, Reverse Shot
'Understated romance "Here"' uses moss as a metaphor. It invites the viewer into interpretations messages...and observations Devos is making about our changing world and those best adapted to roll with those changes, taking comfort and pleasure wherever they settle and accumulate. Like moss.'
Roger Moore, RogersMovieNation
Bas Devos' fourth feature unfolds like a series of beautiful old Polaroids, turning a brief connection into an elegant work of slow cinema. 'Here' manages to present some of the most striking moving images in recent memory by leaning into the same minute details that its protagonist struggles to recognize in his own daily life."To classify the beautifully meditative 'Here' as anything else would be disingenuous.
A devastatingly detailed meditation on the connections we form in an overstimulated world.'
Christian Zilko, IndiWire
