Intimate Stranger (1991) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by jrhovind ★★★½

  Trying to solve a mystery in the family tree like trying to map the heart of a man who never really wanted to be known. Berliner amasses a staggering amount of evidence, from family photographs and videos, to testimonies of friends and colleagues, to archival footage of history’s intrusions, and yet he still ends up with so many competing versions of his maternal grandfather, as many Joseph Cassutos as there are people whose lives intersected with his. “I guess something inside of him could not help it,” one of his children is left musing about the mysterious man who seemed to feel more at home on the other side of the world. “I never met anybody who disliked him. Other…

• Review by Chase Weaver ★★★½

  Alan Berliner’s dad is such a fucking cartoon lmao

• Review by Oliver Batchelor ★★★★

  This isn't as good as Nobody's Business, but it's still a well told documentary and a really interesting story.

• Review by ms. rei ayanami ★★★½

  It seems that I really enjoy Alan Berliner's style of documentary filmmaking. Intimate Stranger did not click with me to the same extent as The Family Album, but it is a pretty thorough examination of a man with whom I was totally unfamiliar.

• Review by Lucas Cullen 3

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

  Director Alan Berliner's decision to include his father Oscar Berliner's critical commentary of the film's subject (ie. Alan's grandfather and Oscar's ex father-in-law) is an absolutely brilliant choice.

• Review by KerryWinfrey

  Oscar Berliner is once again up to his old tricks (yelling “Who cares?!”), and for that I’m grateful.

• Review by Mike Myers ★★★½

  My second Alan Berliner doc, and I think its safe to say I connect with what he is doing. This suffers slightly from his subject being sort of in the uncanny valley of documentary subjects, with a bit too interesting of a life to really be considered an everyman, but perhaps not quite compelling enough to carry a documentary feature. But it mostly works. A highlight is the director's father, repeatedly throwing cold water on the idea that anyone will give a crap about Joseph Cassuto; hearing him here gives me high hopes for Nobody's Business, in which he himself is the subject.

• Review by Saoirse The Maniac ★★★½

  "How can I cut two fingers out of my hand"

  A mother talking about only herself and 2 of her 4 children being eligable to be a refugee during World War 2. Fucking breaks me man. Fucking breaks me.

• Review by mayaolamy ★★★½

  בא לי לעשות מותחן מסטילסים

• Review by Darin R 🎬 🎥 ★★½

  Strange documentary about a strange father. He basically abandons his family 11 months of the year as a self made ambassador to Japan for Egyptian cotton even though he doesn’t speak Japanese. He wears a kimono, he’s actually a Palestinian Jew whose family traces back through Greece and Italy. They eventually live in Brooklyn before he heads off to Japan on business. The film’s style of a barrage of still photographs complete with camera sound effects gets grating after awhile. But what an odd fellow.

• Review by WorldForgot ★★★½

  Losing yourself in industry and finding connection in solace; affectionate estrangement from the family you've 'made' for the international material you 'make.'

  "Japan was his mistress"

• Review by Asher B ★★★★

  The use of found materials, photographs, overlapping voiceovers, and visual re-enactments of migration, commerce, and family life were vivid.