In the Fog’s WWII Has the Inevitability of an AvalancheBy Michael Atkinson, 2013-06-12, www.villagevoice.com

More accessible and less stupefying than My Joy, In the Fog has the inevitability of an avalanche, and only our overfamilarity with Nazi-tribulation scenarios, and perhaps its excessively punctuated ending, could slow it down. A better anti-summer blockbuster is hard to imagine.

Review: In the FogBy Aaron Light, 2013-06-10, www.filmcomment.com

Loznitsa is still intent on portraying mankind as a writhing, impotent mass of dubious morality and wretched cruelty—life as one long cautionary tale of human folly with a series of inevitably tragic ends. But with In the Fog, he allows his characters good intentions. The film is the director’s big reveal, a glimpse past the steely façade… of My Joy—an expression of his overarching cynicism as a thinly veiled hope for humanity, not a battle cry in favor of its extinction.

Cannes 2012: In the Fog, Student and the Awardsby Benjamin Mercer , 2013-05-06, www.thelmagazine.com

Here, the director of the recent My Joy, a bilious road movie that consisted mostly of detours, works with an all-too-clear formal symmetry, fleshed out by characters who essentially function as stand-ins for varying degrees of core-principle durability, as in a fable or a dead-on-arrival joke. But as it shows an already grim scenario growing still more so, this film does approach the punch-to-the-gut thrust of the earlier one…

Film of the week: In the Fogby Hannah McGill , 2013-04-26, www.bfi.org.uk

The heavy tragic faces here, the sorrowful contemplation of our collective lot and the absence of levity of any kind all adhere to national stereotype to a degree that some will find wearing. But the intellectual range is vast, and the images and performances stirring beyond the customary standard. In its thorough meditation on man’s moral place, and its beautiful depiction of one version of life’s trial, lies this film’s joy.

TIFF Preview -2 In the FogBY CSCOPE2, 2012-09-01, www.cinema-scope.com

In the Fog doesn’t go as far [as My Joy], but it does impress with its dramatic precision and focus on three men involved in a complex game of blame-taking, revenge-killing and misunderstood motives amongst Byelorussian rebels. It also features the power and thrall of Oleg Mutu’s characteristically intense widescreen cinematography, which Loznitsa uses to frame and imbue his plan-séquence stagings with a steady beat toward doom.

Cannes 2012: In the Fog, Student and the Awardsby Glenn Heath Jr., 2012-05-30, www.thelmagazine.com

As a nightmare of revolving war-film possibilities, In the Fog explores how quickly a character’s trajectory can evolve within such a terrifyingly fluid space. Maybe that’s why its deeply cynical ending doesn’t feel entirely hopeless. Even though the rigors of war are relentless and uncompromising, there are small moments of peace hidden within these tragic compositions, reminders of togetherness that, no matter how fleeting, have to count for something.

Cannes 2012: Day 9 - 'In the Fog'by Jordan Cronk, 2012-05-29, www.popmatters.com

The film slowly builds, never reaching a traditional war film climax, but instead stokes equally potent flames as Sushenya delivers a gut-punching final speech before having to choose between honor, friendship, and and his own mortality. It’s a mature move by a mature filmmaker, still only two films deep into what looks to be very promising new direction.

Cannes 2012, Day Nine: The director of Precious drops another prestige stinkbomb and an unfilmable novel gets filmedby Mike D'Angelo, 2012-05-25, www.film.avclub.com

Loznitsa’s previous film, My Joy, was notable for its formal daring and structural gamesmanship, but In the Fog skews much more traditionally festival-elegant, juxtaposing lengthy tracking shots as the men walk or ride through dense forest with locked-down simplicity when they’re at rest. The story is simple, arguably too simple….

Review: Sergei Loznitsaʼs "My Joy"on Notebook MUBI, 2011-09-30, www.mubi.com

Starting with the one man, his truck, and the road, Loznitsaʼs film finds good reason to branch off from that singular movement in newly opened directions of story, as the region the man travels through seems a repository for Russian history, miscreant deeds and shackled existences.