The Citizen

Vranik’s film couldn’t be more timely in its moral inquiry, but it’s timeless in form and technique, a melodrama tempered with a painstaking realism.

The film, directed by Roland Vranik from a script by Mr. Vranik and Ivan Szabo, is a careful, compassionate and beautifully acted character drama with a social conscience.

Beautifully acted by its ensemble of mostly non-professional actors, The Citizen puts a very human face on a topic that has inflamed much of the Western world.

Deliberately paced but shot with a quiet magnetism and close-in immediacy,The Citizen benefits in comparison to other immigrant dramas because even though this is a story suffused with empathy, it doesn’t center on either a good deed being done by a white Westerner for a helpless dark-skinned foreigner or that foreigner’s two-dimensional pluck.

An involving, stacked deck of a story plus strong acting and a mix of vital themes combine to make The Citizen a solid drama about immigration, nationalism and survival in an often unforgiving world.

It adheres too rigidly to news-cycle replications of barbaric governmental acts, and without putting them into greater perspective.