"Riveting... fascinating... intriguing... An extremely rich tapestry of historical events and their mythic implications unfolds onscreen... With it’s rich visual imagery, ‘Predictions of Fire’ is a timely, sharply focused documentary whose implications about the use (and abuse) of art for political propaganda go way beyond Slovenia or Eastern Europe"

-- Emanuel Levy, Variety, February 26, 1996

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"Ominous and intellectually provocative."

-- Stephen Holden, The New York Times, Oct. 2, 1996

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"Sensational. A 20th Century saga. "

-- J. Hoberman, The Village Voice, Oct. 2-8, 1996

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"Brilliantly nutty... This unnerving film helped me to see how any culture that's endured shifting totalitarian systems might find all imagery absurd."

-- Fred Camper, "Critic's Choice", Chicago Reader, July 5, 1996

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"A mesmerizing, mindblowing look at the uneasy mixing of politics and art in Eastern Europe... explores the history of totalitarianism in Yugoslavia and how the government pushed its oppressive ideology by incorporating it into art...hypnotic...completely original."

-- Bill Hoffman, NY Post, Oct. 2, 1996

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"Predictions of Fire is essential viewing for anyone who isn't afraid to confront fundamental questions about humanity in the 21st century."

-- Kevin McAlester, The Met (Dallas/Ft. Worth), January 3, 1996

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"Stunning.... Not to be missed."

-- Annemarie Jonson, RealTime/OnScreen (Sydney Australia), July 1996

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“A better than very well-made documentary. The film exposes the ideological mechanisms that sank the former Yugoslavia, in only a few years, into nationalist rhetoric, ethnic hatred and mass manipulation.”

-- Hans Beerekamp, NRC Handelsblad (The Netherlands), March 13, 1996

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"Unlike Kusturica and Zafranovic, Benson gives you a wider context -- it goes well beyond the horizon of Tito’s self-managed workers’ paradise."

-- Benjamin Perasovic, AS/Andere Sinema (Belgium), Spring 1996

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“A filmic signifier par excellance.”

-- Stojan Pelko, Screen (Slovenia), Spring 1996

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"Fascinating. Benson’s film becomes a history of modern-day Yugoslavia, tracing the way potent imagery was used to serve the needs of the state, and later to feed the ethnic hatred that arose after its fall."

-- David Kehr, NY Daily News, Oct. 2, 1996

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"Michael Benson proved with this film that he has a perfect grasp of the aestheticization of politics as well as of myth-creation within totalitarian systems... Predictions of Fire skillfully exchanges archival, reportorial, and also fictional scenes, which together make a new story. The film doesn’t for a moment try to hide what its about: how to fascinate with manipulation."

-- Nerina Kocjancic, Delo, (Slovenia) Oct. 26, 1995

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"In some way, we could say, Slovenia got, with Predictions of Fire, Kusterica’s Underground."

-- Zdenko Vrdlovec, Dnevnik, (Slovenia) Oct. 23, 1995

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