It is haunting in its literal and symbolic meanings, which is the powerful, lingering effect of Yellow Asphalt.
80
Variety
Variety
With its remarkably intimate look at Israeli Bedouin culture, a subject heretofore little treated, Danny Verete's Yellow Asphalt is a deeply affecting and brutally uncompromising anthology of three unrelated stories.
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
More than the sum of its parts.
70
The New York TimesDana Stevens
The New York TimesDana Stevens
The inhospitability of the land emphasizes the spare precision of the narratives and helps to give them an atavistic power, as if they were tales that had been handed down since the beginning of time.
These three films form a remarkably cohesive whole, both visually and thematically, through their consistently sensitive and often exciting treatment of an ignored people.
63
New York Post
New York Post
So lovingly and perceptively filmed that you can almost taste the desiccated air.
Though it's tempting to praise Verete for having the courage to show the worst of both worlds, only a propagandist could get away with being so reductive; an artist should be held to a higher standard.
40
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Dryly cynical; the scenarios pit plump, amoral, industrialized Jews against draconian, wife-beating, tribal Arabs.