 Dündar is, according to "Today's Zaman" reviewer Emine Yıldırım, "a highly respected journalist and one of the most well-respected specialists on republican history" who, "investigates, making use of an extensive pool of archives and carefully crafted reconstructed scenes, not just the political but the personal trials and tribulations of the founder of modern Turkey, supported by an insightfully articulate narrative and the moving music of Goran Bregovic," but "aside from a few anecdotes, his film does not present anything we don’t already know about Atatürk.