Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
On Quartile, Tangerines scores 8/10 across five categories — strongest on Acting (Well Above Average), weakest on Plot (Above Average).
Ranked among Quartile’s Top Acting.
War in Abkhazia, 1992. An Estonian man Ivo has stayed behind to harvest his crops of tangerines. In a bloody conflict at his door, a wounded man is left behind, and Ivo is forced to take him in.
Tangerines is a quietly devastating anti-war chamber piece set during the 1992 Abkhazian conflict. Its plot — two wounded enemies sheltering under the same Estonian farmer's roof — is elegantly simple, almost parable-like, and executed with great restraint; it earns a solid 3 rather than a 4 because its thematic arc is somewhat predictable. The acting is exceptional: Lembit Ulfsak as Ivo delivers one of the great understated performances of European cinema of its decade, and the two combatants are rendered with genuine complexity, earning a 4. Cinematography is competent and atmospheric but not visually adventurous — a 3. Novelty is high: the film's specific historical setting (the little-filmed Abkhazian war), its Estonian perspective, and its compressed, near-theatrical intimacy give it a genuinely singular voice that few war films share — a 4. The ending is moving and earned but follows a somewhat foreseeable emotional trajectory for its genre, landing at 3.