Metacritic reviews

This is a potent, vital film.

It’s the journo’s open gaze and natural inquisitiveness, his refusal to merely demonize his abusers, that give the film its discomforting power.

Theo Who Lived is a cross-pollination of performance art and self-purging, a cleansing act that allows Curtis to face the demons that still torment him today from within the safety of a film production.

This film is valuable on account of its singular vantage point, and not just because of the firsthand description of the jihadist group’s brutality, which is unsurprising.

An account of captivity and torture unlike most that have emerged from recent conflicts in the Middle East, David Schisgall's Theo Who Lived finds, in freed journalist Theo Padnos, a man with surprising empathy for those who beat and nearly killed him.

Theo Who Lived is fascinating, and Theo Padnos is an exacting storyteller, but the film pushes through one story point to the next, occasionally prizing velocity over texture.

Theo Padnos, who was kidnapped and held for nearly two years by al Qaeda in Syria, has a compelling story to tell. Unfortunately, it is not compellingly told in the documentary Theo Who Lived.