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The Long Way Home

Dove review.

In the Film “The Long Way Home” the two most unlikely characters come together to form a friendship that no one expected. The two learn to lean on each other and help us understand the importance of friendship and communication. Families are brought closer together and gaps are sealed as a father and son learn to talk about their differences. This is a heartwarming film that has some great lessons. Due to the mature subject matter of two adults discussing sex and some mild language, we award it the Dove Seal for ages twelve plus. The film is to be commended for its theme of communication.

Dove Rating Details

Fist fight.

There is some talk about losing one's virginity.

D-2; A-1; B-1; SOB-1; D-1; OMG-1.

A character takes medication; smoking.

Man is laying in bed with only a sheet over his middle implying that he is naked.

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Film information, dove content.

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The Long Way Home Reviews

...The Long Way Home is as detailed as it can be in just under two hours.

Full Review | Jan 27, 2022

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 16, 2005

The strength of the film lies in the footage that Harris was able to assemble and the stars he signed up to read from the diaries and letters of the time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 25, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Full Review | Original Score: 90/100 | Jan 1, 2000

Film Review: ‘The Long Way Home’

Alphan Eseli's shattering debut is a strong, disturbing anti-war film set in Eastern Anatolia following the 1915 Battle of Sarikamis.

By Ronnie Scheib

Ronnie Scheib

• Film Review: ‘Song of Lahore’ 9 years ago
• Film Review: ‘One Cut, One Life’ 9 years ago
• Film Review: ‘Applesauce’ 9 years ago

In first-time Turkish helmer Alphan Eseli’s shattering film “The Long Way Home ,” the horrors of war are demonstrated not by soldiers in the heat of combat, but by seven survivors trekking home across the snow-covered hills of Eastern Anatolia after the 1915 Battle of Sarikamis. Subzero temperatures force the disparate travelers, arriving separately from different directions, to take shelter in the same deserted, burnt-out village, where the solidarity initially forged by their shared circumstances breaks down as food supplies dwindle and class/ethnic tensions escalate. This strong, disturbing winner of a special jury prize at Montreal reps a hard theatrical sell but should impress at fests.  

In the opening sequence, shot in startling long shots and occasional closeups against seemingly infinite expanses of white, a horse-drawn wagon struggles up a hill, a man (Ugur Polat) pulling on the horse’s bridle. The straining beast falls over dead, compelling the man and his two charges, a richly dressed woman (Nergis Ozturk) and her young daughter (Myraslava Kostyeva), to trudge ahead on foot.

Almost more than any of the human characters, these unbroken snowscapes epitomize the film.  It was on this terrain that some 90,000 Turkish troops, who had embarked on an ill-advised offensive against the Russian army, famously froze to death. Indeed, the man, woman and child must pass between endless rows of these fallen frozen soldiers that suddenly appear before them, silently stretching into the horizon and beyond.

Popular on Variety

After a series of paranoid encounters as each of the players finds his way to the same torched, abandoned Armenian village, seven people are soon huddled around a makeshift fire. There’s the upper-class trio from the wagon (introduced in the opening scene); an Armenian peasant man (Murharrem Bayrak) and woman (Sula Cetindag) from an adjoining Russian-ravaged hamlet; and two Turkish soldiers (Serdar Orcin, Sevket Suha Tezel), very much the worse for wear.

Cold and exhaustion keep dialogue at a minimum. Not one for stereotypes, writer-director Eseli manifests his characters’ social differences through the manner in which they weigh their options rather than through the usual class indicators (such as upper-crust arrogance). The presence of the young girl unites the motley group in a vaguely protective mode but as new threats loom, social taboos fall away, particularly for the soldiers whose very humanity seems to have hemorrhaged through their wounds.

The film grows bleaker and bleaker as freezing cold, starvation and murder decimate the remaining hangers-on, clinging to the last shreds of civilization and desperate to reach home. Cinematographer Hayk Kirakosyan’s stark compositions chill, Burak Topalakci’s desolate sound design hits hard, and the haunting score (by Bela Tarr regular Mihaly Vig) devastates.

Reviewed at Montreal World Film Festival (First Films, competing), Sept. 1, 2013. Running time: 112 MIN. Original title: "Eve donus Sarikamis 1915"

• Production: (Turkey) A Bocek Yapim production in collaboration with Mars Entertainment Group, Bubi Films. Produced by Oguz Peri, Alphan Eseli. Executive producer, Emrah Gamsızoglu.
• Crew: Directed by Alphan Eseli. Screenplay, Serdar Tantekin, Eseli. Camera (color, widescreen), Hayk Kirakosyan; editor, Omer Ozyimazel; music, Mihaly Vig; production designer, Tural Polat; costume designer, Gulumser Gurtunca; sound (Dolby Digital), Okan Selcuk; sound designer, Burak Topalakci. 
• With: Ugur Polat, Nergis Ozturk, Serdar Orcin, Murharrem Bayrak, Sevket Suha Tezel, Sula Cetindag, Myraslava Kostyeva.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the long walk home.

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`The Long Walk Home" tells the stories of two women and their families at a critical turning point in American history. One of the women is black, a maid in an affluent neighborhood, a hard-working woman who goes home after a long day and does all of the same jobs all over again for her family. The other woman is white, the wife of a successful businessman. She works, too. She doesn't have a paid job, but in 1955 in Montgomery, Ala., it was full-time work to please a husband who thought a woman's place was in the home, and who had a great many other thoughts on the proper places of just about everybody in his narrow world.

These characters are confronted by a historic moment. One day in Montgomery a black woman named Rosa Parks, who had worked hard and was tired, refused to stand up in the back of the segregated bus when there was an empty seat in the front. Her action, born out of a long weariness with the countless injustices of discrimination, inspired the Montgomery bus boycott, which was led by a young local preacher named Martin Luther King Jr., and which grew into the civil rights movement.

For a woman like Odessa Cotter ( Whoopi Goldberg ), however, the eventual verdict of history could not have been easily guessed on the day she decided to join thousands of other Montgomery blacks in refusing to take the bus. She simply knew how she felt, and acted on it, and started to walk to work every day. That meant getting up a couple of hours earlier in the morning, and getting home long after dark at night, and it meant blisters on her heels. It also meant inconvenience for her employer, Miriam Thompson ( Sissy Spacek ), who had a house to keep and a husband to feed, and who took her duties as a wife very solemnly - suppressing the obvious reality that she was married to a jerk.

Odessa is not eager for her employer to discover she is honoring the boycott - she doesn't want to risk losing her job - but one day Miriam finds out, and decides that she will give the maid a ride in her car a couple of days a week. This decision of course would enrage Miriam's husband, a self-satisfied bigot named Norman ( Dwight Schultz ), but Miriam doesn't tell him, and when he finds out, she defends her action as part of her job as a dutiful housewife.

In the meantime, she and her husband grow in different ways because of the boycott. Miriam is no activist, but can see as a wife and a mother what the boycotting black women are going through, and begins to sympathize with them. Her husband is taken by a relative to a White Citizen's Council meeting, where rabble-rousers depict the boycotters as dangerous subver sives (any true American would of course prefer to stand in the back of the bus than sit in the front - if he were black, that is).

The movie leads up to an inevitable confrontation between the white husband and wife, and to a climax of surprising power. But the general lines of the plot are not what make the movie special. We know going in more or less what will happen, both with the boycott and with these characters. What involved me was the way John Cork's screenplay did not simply paint the two women as emblems of a cause, but saw them as particular individuals who defined themselves largely through their roles as wives and mothers.

This movie would not have been made quite the same way 10 or 20 years ago. The focus would have been on the liberalism of the white woman and the courage of the black woman, and most of the scenes would have involved the white family. "The Long Walk Home" takes the time to develop both families, to show that in addition to being heroic but abstract media images, the maids like Odessa were also individuals with all the usual human hopes and worries, not least of which was losing a job.

Because the movie does center some of its important scenes inside the black household, it's all the more surprising that it uses the gratuitous touch of a white "narrator" - apparently to reassure white audiences the movie is "really" intended for them. The narrator is Spacek's teenage daughter, who has no role of any importance in the movie and whose narration adds nothing except an unnecessary point of view. When she talks about her memories of "my mother," we want to know why Goldberg's daughter doesn't have equal time. She probably has more interesting memories.

That objection aside, "The Long Walk Home" is a powerful and affecting film, so well played by Goldberg and Spacek that we understand not just the politics of the time but the emotions as well. In a way, this movie takes up where " Driving Miss Daisy " leaves off. Both are about affluent white Southern women who pride themselves on their humanitarian impulses, but who are brought to a greater understanding of racial discrimination - gently, tactfully and firmly - by their black employees.

Miss Daisy and Miss Miriam are not revolutionaries. Neither are Hoke Colburn and Odessa Cotter. But the situation had gotten to the point where something had to be done, because people after all must be permitted fairness and dignity, and these two movies tell two small and not earthshaking stories about ordinary people, black and white, who managed to talk and managed to listen, and made things a little better.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Long Walk Home (1991)

Whoopi Goldberg as Odessa Cotter

Sissy Spacek as Miriam Thompson

Dwight Schultz as Norman Thompson

Ving Rhames as Herbert Cotter

Dylan Baker as Tunker Thompson

Erika Alexander as Selma Cotter

Directed by

• Richard Pearce

Photographed by

• Roger Deakins
• George Fenton
• Bill Yahraus

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The Long Way Home

Film details, brief synopsis, cast & crew, glenn jordan, kristin griffith, patrick keating, peter bryant, technical specs.

Tom Gerrin is a plain spoken Kansan who has lived a simple and ordinary life. At the age of 75, he finds he has little to look forward to beyond retiring with his son and overly protective daughter-in-law. A letter from his old flame Veronica, suddenly has him wondering if he hasn't given up too easily on life. He decides to pay Veronica a visit and soon finds himself on the road with Leanne Bossert, a free-spirited young woman. Together they set off on a hitchhiking expedition to California, where Tom will visit Veronica and Leanne will return to her ailing father.

Peter Dvorsky

Eric keenleyside, sarah paulson, michael philip, garwin sanford, diana stevan, sudsy clark, colleen fox, dolores drake.

Jack Lemmon

Amanda o'leary, william devry, nick misura, helen honeywell.

Betty Garrett

Lesley ewen, rosemary dunsmore, john r taylor, roger haskett, michael weaver, james purcell, stuart aikins, lesley beale, kevin burns, michel colombier, sean cossey, caroline cranstoun, rosalina da silva, suzan derkson-mcleod, todd elyzen, terri engdahl, robert l freedman, michael graham, robert halmi, william hanley, steve holloway, catherine howard, patrick jamain, lynn kressel, yelena lanskaya, michael mcgee, mike mertens, joe parisella, jeff plecas, david w rose, tobias schliessler, sanna seppanen, david a simmons, gail l smith, james steuart, marie tate-johnson, brent thomas, lawrence turman, pascal verschooris, louise vincent, william waring, kimi webber, richard worden, best documentary feature, miscellaneous notes.

Aired in United States March 1, 1998

Completed shooting November 28, 1997.

Began shooting October 27, 1997.

Previous titles: "Running Home," "The Road Home" and "Pensioner."

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The long way home.

Directed by Mark Jonathan Harris

For the survivors of the Holocaust, liberation was only the beginning.

The story of the post World War II Jewish refugee situation from liberation to the establishment of the modern state of Israel.

Morgan Freeman Ed Asner Sean Astin Martin Landau Miriam Margolyes David Paymer Nina Siemaszko Helen Slater Michael York

Director Director

Mark Jonathan Harris

Producers Producers

Richard Trank Marvin Hier Christo Brock

Writer Writer

Editor editor, cinematography cinematography, composer composer.

Lee Holdridge

Moriah Films Simon Wiesenthal Center

Alternative Titles

הדרך הארוכה הביתה, Ins Gelobte Land, O Longo Caminho Para Casa, 집으로 가는 길, 遥遥归乡路, Les chemins de la liberté

Documentary History War

Releases by Date

• Theatrical limited

19 Sep 1997

Releases by country.

120 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★★★½

Sad, but just shows how victorious Holocaust survivors really were.

Watched on: Kanopy

Review by Eliza ★★½

Part heart-wrenching doc about the plight of Jews following the liberation from the concentration camps, part Israeli propaganda. If you're looking for objectivity, you've come to the wrong place. Free Palestine.

Review by Benjamin Shrader ½

Jonathan Glazer is a hero

Review by John Nesbit ★★★★½

I highly recommend this film as a prelude for upcoming Ken Burns documentary titled U.S. and the Holocaust to premiere in September. This two hour documentary focuses on the extreme difficulties Jewish concentration camp survivors experienced after the camps are liberated.

Initial encounters only foreshadowed the future. Many U.S. soldiers were sickened by the appearance of the survivors with many turning away and vomiting. In turn many of the prisoners also turned away, just realizing that there mere appearance wasn't acceptable. This was Only the beginning.

More horrors to come. The U.S. is Not innocent. Nor are the British.

They weren't innocent before Germany began its pogrom and they continued to falter even after the camps were liberated. And later…

Review by sofia floppola ★★★

Be careful: this is not an unbiased documentary regarding the condition of Judaism post-Holocaust. This film has an agenda, and the agenda is zionist in nature. There is nothing wrong with this per se, but the fact the documentary attempts to hide behind a veil of post-Holocaust rumination when, in truth, it is attempting to justify the mass-migration of post-war Jews to Israel (sometimes through illegal means) will alienate a lot of viewers who believed they were going to watch a film about refugees and trauma.

This film is still WORTH YOUR TIME. Many interesting stories from Holocaust survivors regarding the camps they lived in post-war, their state of mind and how losing all family led to a desperation to create community.

Review by Danielle Solzman ★★★★★

Holocaust Remembrance Day 2022 #2. The Long Way Home follows the years in the aftermath of the Holocaust in which Jews are displaced and have nowhere else to go. Review .

Review by NoTalentRipley ★★★★★

Despite the believably appalling review bombing from the pro-terrorism crowd, this doc is an important reminder that the global Jewish population still hasn't recovered from the Holocaust - there are only 15 million Jews, many traumatised, and one little piece of their land.

Review by Hegel's Film Curator ★★½ 1

It is honestly incredulous how established the Zionist narrative was by the time this movie was released, nowadays the hypocrisy is so blatant that anyone who believes that Israel has a right to exist by dispossessing others is just a f*scist. I mean, the historical revisionism when it comes to Palestine and what it means to be semitic is Hitlerite propaganda at worst.

Review by Kendoval ★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

In 1974, prominent Anti Defamation League members, Arnold Foster and Benjamin Epstein, published the book The New Anti-Semitism, which explored this concept that had been in discussion among Jewish scholars and philosophers for quite some time by that point. This idea of a new form of anti-semitism that was rising in the west. Not a religious or racial antisemitism, but a political one. Anti-Zionism, the discreditation of the belief that the Jews had a right to a homeland. The delegitimization of Israel as a sovereign state. This idea of a new antisemitism has since become a popular one, as seen by the fact that the ADL includes anti-Zionism within their definition of antisemitism. But there does exist a criticism of…

Review by André Renato ★★★½

Em primeiro lugar: assistir a documentários sobre o Holocausto é - precisa ser - uma obrigação moral de todo e qualquer cidadão, não importa a etnia, nacionalidade ou religião. Porque a cadela do nazi-fascismo NUNCA sai do cio, mesmo que sob outros nomes. O perigo de retorno à barbárie é perene (o Brasil, a cada semana, não cansa de nos mostrar isso). Não é psicológica e humanamente fácil assistir a documentários sobre o Holocausto, com todos os seus depoimentos e suas imagens de arquivo, em foto e em vídeo. É grande risco de inventarmos defesas psíquicas perniciosas que tentem aliviar o fulminante impacto das imagens, das falas e dos fatos, contra cuja realidade e arbítrio NÃO HÁ escapatória possível. Inclusive…

Review by Christof ★★★

Just like Into the Arms of Strangers , made by the same director two years later, and like this one an Oscar winner for Best Documentary feature, there is a lot of information packed into talking heads and voiceover (especially voiceover, of which there is a great lot, this time by Morgan Freeman).

I don't love this kind of documentary very much (it just doesn't feel very artistic), but for what it is, it's well-made.

Review by momalley ★★★½

A comparison between this movie and 1982's Genocide is instructive--both assume that its audience is in need of being informed of major, world-shaping 20th-century events surrounding the Holocaust, but The Long Way Home , dealing with the post-WWII struggles faced by Europeans Jews leading to the formation of Israel, is the only one of the two that's actually right in that assumption. At least, for me. As I said in my Genocide review, the need to be informed about something will obviously differ wildly from viewer to viewer, and that's no less true here. Either way, we're still dealing with an info-doc, one that I found often fascinating but one that's still chock full of talking heads, archival footage, and other dusty Ken Burns-lite tropes. There's nothing about this form of the movie that's going to wow you. But if you're as ignorant as I am, the content might.

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A long way to come home, common sense media reviewers.

Woman faces challenges in a new country in confusing drama.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Adapting to a new country can be difficult.

Aurora discovers her boyfriend is not a good guy a

The travails of immigrants making their way in a n

A man with anger issues is verbally abusive and fr

Someone gives the finger.

Adults drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes.

Parents need to know that A Long Way to Come Home , a sequel to the 2020 One Day We'll Talk About Today, is a heartfelt story about a young Indonesian art student studying in London. Her devotion to an abusive boyfriend upends her ability to complete her degree and sends her scrambling to earn money…

Positive Messages

Positive role models.

Aurora discovers her boyfriend is not a good guy and has to find the strength and determination to remake her life when she breaks up with him. A boyfriend is controlling, angry, and self-centered.

Diverse Representations

The travails of immigrants making their way in a new country are portrayed here. The setting is London and the cast is largely Indonesian.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

A man with anger issues is verbally abusive and frightening to his girlfriend, throwing and breaking things when everything doesn't go his way. A man punches another man, leaving a large facial bruise.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that A Long Way to Come Home , a sequel to the 2020 One Day We'll Talk About Today, is a heartfelt story about a young Indonesian art student studying in London. Her devotion to an abusive boyfriend upends her ability to complete her degree and sends her scrambling to earn money and make a new life. The boyfriend yells and throws things when he's angry. Someone beats him up. Adults drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes. Someone gives the finger. In Indonesian with English subtitles. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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There aren't any parent reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.

What's the Story?

In A LONG WAY TO COME HOME, Aurora (Sheila Dare Aisha) is an art student sent to study in London by her Indonesian parents. The action begins at her boyfriend Jem's (Ganindra Bimo) art exhibition. Although it's not explained until more than an hour later, something goes wrong and he leaves in a huff. They fight as he blames her for some undisclosed transgression. Furious, he smashes her phone and other things, including her art project, and she packs and leaves. She's taken in by Kit (Jerome Kurnia) and Honey (Lutesha), two friends, and it's ever so slowly revealed that she had abandoned her own studies in order to help Jem, thereby missing her own deadlines. Now she has to come up with another year's tuition, forcing her to take odd jobs. Her brother Ang (Rio Dewanto) and sister show up from Jakarta, sent by their parents to find out what happened to Aurora and to bring her home. Ang punches Jem, who presses charges and lands Ang in jail. To get Jem to drop the charges, Aurora agrees to move back in with the abusive Jem. Out-of-sequence scenes and lots of important missing information make the narrative hard to follow.

Is It Any Good?

A Long Way to Come Home is an unmitigated mess. From the moment it begins, it feels as if we have missed something, as if the filmmakers shot a bunch of scenes and then assembled them in random order, making no sense whatever. The narrative doesn't track, the story jumps from one scene, indicating the plot is moving in one direction, to another, where suddenly the world is completely different and no explanation has been offered. Aurora seems to move out of her friends' home to return to the abusive boyfriend. But the next scene she is back living with the friends. What happened? Perhaps she changed her mind, but where is the scene showing us why? The brother and sister visiting from Indonesia completely disappear from the plot. And when they reappear, it seems as if no time has passed, yet during their absence, Aurora has applied for and received a scholarship, which must have taken months to process. Were they sitting in a London hotel room all that time wondering what to do about Aurora? It sure looks that way.

The filmmakers seem to have no sense of dramatic emphasis and no recognition that some scenes and events are more important than others. Many scenes are accompanied by swelling, manipulatively emotional music even though nothing dramatic is happening visually. Multiple scenes with dialogue have no sound. What are the characters saying to each other? Why can't we know? It often feels like huge chunks of vital information are missing. The ineptitude of the direction and writing is breathtaking. Only an extremely likable and competent cast slightly redeems this indecipherable jumble of heartfelt but ultimately unruly narrative.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what the story says about the importance of family. How do Aurora's siblings support her? How do they challenge her?

The movie makes the point that home may not be where you come from. How does Aurora recreate "family" in London? What is it about her new life in a foreign country that makes her feel at home?

Many scenes are presented out of sequence. Do you think this choice makes the movie better or is it a mistake? Why?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : June 1, 2023
• Cast : Sheila Dare Aisha , Jerome Kurnia , Lutesha , Rio Dewanto , Ganindra Bimo
• Director : Angga Dwimas Sasongko
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 109 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : June 5, 2023

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The Long Way Home (1997)

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A Long Way from Home – review

P resumably first-time writer-director Virginia Gilbert (daughter of Brian Gilbert, Wilde) was aiming to make something oblique and fragile about Brits abroad, in the style of Joanna Hogg (Unrelated, Archipelago). She even hired Hogg's cinematographer, Ed Rutherford. But this slight, conventional tale has nothing of Hogg's rigorous formalism or savage honesty. James Fox and Brenda Fricker play one of those middle-class English couples who've retired to France and act all proprietorial about the place even though, in Brenda's case, they barely speak the language. Their marriage has been becalmed by routine, so when Fox meets feline-featured Natalie Dormer, he offers, with a little too much chivalry, to show her and her jerk of a boyfriend (Paul Nicholls) around Nîmes. Rutherford does lovely things with the Provençal light, but Fox is too much of a cipher to care about. There is one properly striking scene, however, involving Fricker.

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