New York Observer / Andrew Sarris
“Marvelous! A surprise ending amounts to one of the most heart-rendingly brilliant coups in directing, writing and acting I have ever experienced on the screen. Like only a few endings I can recall, it makes you rethink everything you have seen before.”

New York Times / Matt Zoller Seitz
 “Sexy and smart!”

L magazine / Cullen Gallagher,
 “A masterful and original thriller that matches Rohmer’s vacationing plots with the paranoid and anxious underpinnings of Polanski, coming together in a noir-tinged story of desire, infidelity responsibility - and, of course, moral ambiguity.”

Film Comment / Philip Lopate,
 “An astonishingly graduated portrayal by Martina Gedeck.” 

The Guardian / Peter Bradshaw
 “The spirit of Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water is revived in this engrossing and disquieting film.”

Indiewire / Michael Joshua Rowin,
 “Summer ‘04 will surely be compared to the films of Claude Chabrol as its slow, insidious machinations build to a cynical ending implicating false bourgeois propriety, but it´s also more than that. There’s something haunting and - to use a word no longer in fashion - existential in Krohmer’s patient, unrushed delivery, in his ability to trust his soundtrack-less images and create lived-in conditions for understated, complex performances. Summer ´04 is as real as life.”

Eye Weekly
“Summer ‘04 is a rare thing: a successfully asymmetrical drama. It’s difficult to predict where this story of five people […] on a progressively stressful seaside idyll will go, because the characters are genuinely live wires and the screenplay keeps finding interesting ways to cross them. Stefan Krohmer directs the emotionally charged material with calm and restraint.”

Now Magazine
“Chabrol meets Rohmer in this superb psychological study of the shifting relationships between five people on summer vacation. Mostly Martha´s Gedeck plays a sexually free, morally ambiguous married woman […] The finely drawn characters evolve through sharp dialogue, but what makes the film special are the unexpected plot turns. Unusual and subtle, this is an old-fashioned art house sleeper hit.”

National Post
“A mother, father, son, girlfriend and neighbour all collide into a psychological mess in this effortlessly complex drama from Stefan Krohmer. […] Svea Lohde, as doomed nymphet Lidia in the middle of this love matrix, turns in what is one of the most memorable performances here, poising herself to become the next Julia Jentsch. But it’s Gedeck as the flawed matriarch who gives the film its edge, walking along the line between moral and immoral as through it were just another barefoot stroll on the beach.”

Film Journal International / Erica Abeel (September 2006)
“And finally, of course, there´s always the thrill of discovering that one jewel. This year, by broad consensus, it was a German film from the Directors´ Fortnight called Summer of ´04 from Stefan Krohmer, a young helmer positioned for a brilliant future. Summer is a chamber piece with the confidence to explore all the permutations of a single story, versus the multiple-story trend. In a Claire´s Knee-style setup, a precocious 12-year-old girl comes to visit her boyfriend and his attractive fortyish parents in their vacation home on the Baltic coast, drastically altering the family dynamic. Enter a dishy, mildly mysterious stranger, who may or may not be courting the girl-and who ignites passionate desire in the older woman. What follows plays out with a subtlety and suspense that teases the viewer at every turn, delivering in the last scene the sting in the scorpion´s tale. With any justice, Summer of ´04 will be headed this way soon.”

Variety / Derek Elley (May 21, 2006)
“‘Summer ´04’ more than confirms the promise of young Teuton helmer Stefan Krohmer, in partnership with writer Daniel Nocke, from their debut feature, ‘They´ve Got Knut’, three years ago. With a tip-top cast, headed by well-known actress Martina Gedeck in one of her most nuanced perfs to date”
“Gedeck (‘Elementary Particles’) is a comic-romantic actress who simply gets better as she gets older, and is aces here as a woman whose liberal principles are challenged”
“Nocke’s gift for dialogue in which there’s way more going on than generally breaks the surface”

Libération / Gérard Lefort (May 22, 2006)
"Yes, German films truly exist. Jawohl, the official selections saw nothing but fire. It is fire that roils and burns in ‘Summer ‘04’ by Stefan Krohmer (34 years old). A smoldering fire that threatens to burst into an inferno.”
“There is a trace of Rohmer (‘Lolita à la plage’) in this Krohmer and his tale of a middle-class woman driven by strange demons in her pants. But it is a Rohmer eaten away by the slow acid of a menace that also gnaws at the stability of this family and the tranquillity of the film.”
“The crucial scenes of the film unfold on board the two family sailboats. One watches for the wind... It is amusing up to the moment when it is no longer funny at all. At best, an icy wave slapping one´s face, at worst, much worse... ‘Summer ‘04’ is like a center-board. Turning at the will of the wind, sometimes close to capsizing, yet aimed with great determination towards a compendium of decomposition. Welcome on board - but without a safety vest."

Screen / Allan Hunter (May 22, 2006)
“A smartly observed screenplay places well-developed characters into a series of situations that never unfold entirely as the viewer might have predicted.”
“a sharp work from the team of director Stefan Krohmer and screenwriter Daniel Nocke”
“there is a hint of Michael Haneke in the sense of unease that builds over a family holiday and an echo of Roman Polanski”

Filmecho Filmwoche / Katharina Dockhorn (May 20, 2006)
“Stefan Krohmer and Daniel Nocke are regarded as the dream team of German film and television for quite some time now.”

Die Presse.com / Christoph Huber (May 29, 2006)
"A German middle-class study of relationships that can hold its own with Chabrol."

Süddeutsche Zeitung / Susan Vahabzadeh (May 24, 2006)
"A twelve-year-old Lolita turns a family upside down - a film that is so beautiful and calm and precisely observed over broad stretches that you wish Krohmer had been given a more prominent place at the festival."

Süddeutsche Zeitung / Tobias Kniebe (May 29, 2006)
"…from the amazingly productive film workshop of Daniel Nocke (script) and Stefan Krohmer (director). On the whole, this is their most successful and enjoyable film to date: a summer house, a ´La Ronde´ of innocent attractions and dangerous liaisons that distantly recalls Tchekov and Schnitzler, who is even mentioned, but in that specific milieu that used to be called polemically ´bloody liberal.´ The adults play perfectly, but the film really landed a bull´s eye with Svea Lohde as the twelve-year-old Lolita on whose shoulders the film rests."

Variety / Todd McCarthy (June 4, 2006)
“The Fortnight, under yet another new regime this year, was a schizophrenic affair, with several entirely indefensible titles balanced by some surprises that ranked among the major hits of Cannes. Foremost among the latter was […] Stefan Krohmer’s ‘Summer ’04 on the banks of the Schlei’ from Germany”

Oliver Père / artistic director of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs
“’Summer ’04’ is the best German film we have seen in a long time and it is the first one we have invited to the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in three years”

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung / Verena Lubken (May 22, 2006)
"…during the sailing sequences, for example, or at the end, you suddenly find yourself in a very ambivalent, unsettling atmosphere that slightly recalls Otto Preminger"

Anthony Kaufman / indiewire.com (May 25, 2006)
“…viewers might sense the faint echoes of Michael Haneke´s ‘Funny Games’ or Roman Polanksi´s ‘Knife in the Water’. But while cleverly shifting character´s alliances and motivations and playing with audience expectations, Krohmer´s suspense is subtler and his drama more human. And a final chilling moral clusterfuck is the director´s own ingenious making.”

Merkur Online / Rüdiger Suchsland (May 23, 2006)
"The future of movies lies […] in the ´Quinzaine,´ that secondary series that once discovered Almodóvar and Kaurismäki. Stefan Krohmer´s ´Summer 04´ is also running in the Quinzaine, as one of two German entries.”
“Headed by a grandiose Martina Gedeck who, in her first Cannes film, finally sets out to become an international star, the film follows the path of Rohmer: a summer story with depth about a Lolita who, in all innocence and through her sheer presence, turns a patchwork family upside down."

Neue Westfälische / dpa (May 23, 2006)
"The film ´Summer ‘04´ by Stefan Krohmer, highly praised by American and French critics, evokes the style of those realistic French dramas that are often screened in Cannes. As the star of ´Summer ‘04,´ actress Martina Gedeck landed tributes from ´Variety´: she is ´aces´ here and ´simply gets better as she gets older.´"