Critics reviews

Below Sea Level is thrilling, uncomfortable, mischievous and totally alive in every frame. It is a portrait of survival in the face of personal disaster, as these "flies and mosquitoes" who call this outpost their home refuse to be swatted. The residents are defiantly "not-homeless," living in makeshift buses, old trailers, on piles of rubble. The patient gaze of Rosi's camera bathes these would-be broken lives with a powerful and affecting sense of dignity.

The Californian flatland squatters... raise questions of independence versus exile as they cultivate freedom in the shadow of necessity... Rosi’s watchful camera starts with morning rituals (and water deliveries) before easing into the slack rhythms of their conversations.

Disguised as a sympathetic portrayal giving voice to a group of dropouts in the California desert, this overlong docu is slow to start, then turns from dull to intrusive. Rosi may have won his subjects’ trust during his two years there, but he’s forfeited the faith of the audience;