FilmInk
The biopic follows the life of decorated Cuban ballet dancer Carlos Acosta, and exists as a stunning embodiment of perseverance told through the art of cinema and dance.
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Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story
Superstar ballet dancer and choreographer Carlos Acosta shares and explores his life story, culminating at the peak of dance. Reenactments of his childhood sit alongside Acosta's life depicted in dance, with Acosta himself captured as onscreen choreographer and director, and even playing his own father.
2019Rating: M, Mature themes and coarse language111 minsCuba, Germany, Spain, UKEnglish and Spanish with English subtitles
DocumentaryWorld Cinema
- Director:
- Icíar Bollaín ('The Olive Tree', 'Even the Rain')
- Writer:
- Paul LavertyCarlos Acosta
- Cast:
- Carlos AcostaKeyvin MartínezSantiago AlfonsoEdlison Manuel Olbera NúñezLaura De la Uz
Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story / Reviews
Sydney Morning Herald
Racial prejudice and Cuba’s rocky economic history play a prominent part in a biopic that moves back and forth in time to produce a dreamily introspective profile of an international talent whose homesickness follows him everywhere.
Full reviewStuff
Acosta's journey to super-stardom – he went on to be feted as the greatest male dancer of his generation, with lead roles at The Royal Ballet, Sadler Wells and The Bolshoi and, next year, he will become artistic director of the Birmingham Ballet – makes for an engrossing yarn. Yuli isn't a particularly flashy or revolutionary film. But it is a more-than-competent retelling of a remarkable life's trajectory.
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The Times
The genius in the film is in how each section feeds each other, and indeed needs each other (the dance comments on the drama, and vice versa), and produces a wholly original and deeply affecting movie.
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Little White Lies
Crafted with passion, integrity and determination, much like Acosta himself.
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The Guardian
What's perhaps surprising given the insider involvement from Acosta is the film's insight and emotional generosity that extends even to overbearing Pedro.
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Time Out
Superstar Cuban ballet dancer Carlos Acosta takes us through his life in unusual style in a mix of drama and dance, fiction and reality.
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Variety
Fandom of, or even familiarity with, Acosta's work isn't a prerequisite for enjoying a film that, accurately or otherwise, shapes his life story into a classical rags-to-riches (or at least street-to-stage) arc.
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Screen Daily
A story hitting every thematic note - family, sacrifice, maleness, black identity, exile and the transforming power of art - that's likely to touch a chord with audiences.
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