Akoka and Gueret split the difference, inviting the audience to consider the meta-ness of everything going on while really just making a compelling social-realist comedy about what happens when a film crew descends on a working-class town. That the filmmakers end up making the same film as Gabriel seems to be the point.

Christian Gallichio

The Film Stage

Luminously photographed and nimbly edited, The Worst Ones — which won the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 — offers a provocative critique of filmmaking practices. It also presents a subtle defense of the onscreen miracles revealed by the young and the raw.

Lisa Kennedy

The New York Times

Part of what makes The Worst Ones tick with a pace close to that of a thriller is its self-reflexive relationship to genre and knack for referentiality.

Clayton Dillard

Slant Magazine