"The neo-Nazi next door: In 'Welcome to Leith,' the deeply strange saga of a tiny town, a white supremacist and a crazy dream unfolds. Surprising and fascinating." - Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
"This could be the scariest film of the year... couldn't be more timely or essential." - Martin Tsai, Los Angeles Times
"Feeling more like a taut Hollywood thriller than a documentary, 'Welcome to Leith' chronicles the disruption caused when a notorious white supremacist moves into a tiny North Dakota town with the intention of taking it over. Grippingly depicting the ensuing tensions that constantly threaten to emerge into violence-- even while raising discomfiting questions about the scope of First Amendment rights-- the film is a nail-biter from start to finish." - Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
"A gripping you-are-there portrait of a community under siege… as engrossing as a fictional thriller."
- Dennis Harvey, Variety
"Fascinating, unnerving. The interviews are rich and disturbing." - Diana Clarke, The Village Voice
"Must See. Filled with gripping showdowns and sinister agendas, the movie builds its unsettling power by depicting the struggle from both perspectives. While the delineation between good and evil holds strong, 'Welcome to Leith' is also creepily even-handed." - Zack Sharf, Indiewire
"Presents a chilling 'it could happen here' scenario..." - David Fear, Rolling Stone
"[This] real horror story... brings new life to old news stories." - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
"The film is about more than just this one incident in this one small town. It also explores the vast cosmology of neo-Nazism and Aryan separatism in America, and does so with an unusual amount of fairness; that is to say, Nichols and Walker often let these head cases speak for themselves. That very matter-of-fact approach enhances the horror. 'Welcome to Leith' is a sober, terrifying look at the very real monsters roaming the quiet countryside." - Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
"The tightknit community’s effort to block a takeover of its town before it gets outnumbered by neo-Nazis makes for intense drama." - Steve Dollar, Wall Street Journal
"The riveting documentary 'Welcome to Leith' chronicles white supremacist Craig Cobb’s mission to create an Aryan utopia in rural Middle America." - Jen Yamato, The Daily Beast
"Incorporating visual and musical cues from Westerns and horror, the Brooklyn-based Nichols and Walker have created a gripping, stylish, and very scary feature documentary that also feels like a genre film, with beautifully desolate b-roll, gripping narrative, and a dread-ratcheting minimalist score." - James Yeh, Vice
"For its eerie sense of timeliness and excellent storytelling, Welcome to Leith is one of the must-watch documentaries of 2015." - Monica Castillo, Paste Magazine
"Tense, incisive, and remarkably objective." - Peter Keough, Boston Globe
"Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker achieve a remarkable degree of intimacy with their subjects-- particularly Cobb, who comes to seem as pathetic as he does monstrous." - Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader
"Unsettling. Nichols and Walker raise fascinating questions about just how much disagreement and hatred we’re willing to accept from our neighbors." - Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com
"Powerful... chilling. Nichols and Walker wisely don't try to demonize anyone — the white supremacists' own words, freely given, do that well enough." - Frank Lovece, Film Journal
"The film lives in the liminal space—or for some of us the cavernous gap—between the First Amendment and the universal condition of believing that our own beliefs are what is right and true. But therein lies the lesson." - Nate von Zumwalt, Sundance Institute
"The film plays out like an edge-of-your-seat thriller ... Leith might seem a long way away geographically, but it’s a lot closer than you might think." - This Week in New York
"As eye opening as it is thought provoking and deeply frightening... A true achievement of modern documentary filmmaking, 'Leith' is one of the year’s great films." - Joshua Brunsting, Criterion Cast
"Entrancing… weaves a bizarre and enthralling tale." - Sound on Sight
"The strongest documentary I’ve seen in the last few years." - AMFM Magazine
"One of the most viscerally terrifying documentaries in recent memory." - Andrew Parker, POV Magazine
"Haunting…creepily even-handed…a stunning portrait of First Amendment rights pushed to their extremes." - Indiewire
"Welcome to Leith is many things, including a story of ordinary people confronted, face-to-face, with attitudes and practices they can neither abide nor understand. Heading into an election year, it is also a fascinating test case for thinking about how we deal with threats to our community and our way of life. The film doesn’t sympathize with Cobb; it uses him to force us to grapple with these and other important questions. How much liberty are we willing to sacrifice to feel safe, and must we give the devil the protection of law even when doing so puts our own lives in danger?" - Alissa Wilkinson, Christianity Today
"You can see all of schizophrenic America at war with itself in these unpaved rural roads."
- Michael Atkinson, In These Times
"The film is most important for giving us a more intimate and unmediated look at the contemporary American far right than we are used to seeing in widely syndicated media… Leith encourages us to wake up to the fact that this way of thinking has real-life consequences outside of shadowy subreddits." - Winston Cook-Wilson, Inverse
" " - Kam Willams, African American Film Critics Association
"Comprehensive and encompassing." - Erik Luers, Filmmaker Magazine
"What an unsettling documentary is 'Welcome to Leith'... What exactly does our first amendment mean and guarantee? That the film will raise this question so strongly among alert viewers is a testament to its search for more than blame and simple answers." - James van Maanen, Trust Movies
"The final shot of Cobb in this film is one of the most satisfying of any documentary I’ve ever seen. Endlessly enthralling, enraging and interesting." - Jeremy Harmon, Reel News Daily
"'Welcome to Leith' is tense and involving... a movie that must be seen, illuminating a problem mainstream America has found easy to ignore." - Corey Craft, ArtsBAHM
"Disturbingly compelling. By presenting their footage as is without a manipulative form of exposition to guide the narrative, the film feels all the more nightmarishly authentic. A vital, important film that exposes the destructively sadistic nature of racial discrimination." - Charlie Nash, Edge Media
"A powerful and provocative springboard for discussing essential matters of liberty and justice." - Flick Philosopher
"In true journalistic spirit Walker and Nichols give full voice to both sides of this conflict... haunting and incendiary."
- D. Schwartz, CineSource Magazine
"It’s a chilling film on several levels, and what the filmmakers capture — confrontations, ugly town hall meetings — is a sobering reminder of what can happen when apathy drives your politics and “It’s all perfectly legal” is enough to end any property or political rights argument." - Movie Nation
"Riveting." - Harvey Karten, Shockya
"Revealing and frightening... the filmmakers transmit [this story’s] seriousness in a manner that the news coverage do not." - Chris Barsanti, PopMatters
|
