''Touching on life, death and everything in between in 157 minutes, this metaphysical road movie follows a police investigation that, when the story opens, has led its characters into near dark.'' Olivia Parker / The Telgraph''Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is an ambitious, leisurely inquiry into a specific world — the haunting land of its title — that transcends borders. Touching on life, death and everything in between in 157 minutes, this metaphysical road movie follows a police investigation that, when the story opens, has led its characters into near dark.'' Manohla Dargis / Nytimes
''The festival’s second prize, the Grand Prix, was split between two films, ‘The Kid With a Bike’ by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and ‘Once Upon A Time in Anatolia’ by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The first is a typically economic and wise fable about a troubled young child in working-class Belgium. The second is an epic and rigorous sideways portrait of a night and day in a murder investigation. ‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’ strong takes the films of Ceylan (‘Uzak’, ‘Three Monkeys’) somewhere new. For me, it was the only masterpiece in the Cannes competition – and that’s in a year of very films all round.'' Dave Calhoun / TimeOut London
