[12] Manhola Dargis of The New York Times gave the film a positive review writing: "In “Bring Your Own Brigade,” the director Lucy Walker doesn’t simply look at the fires; she investigates and tries to understand them.

"[13] Bob Strauss of The San Francisco Chronicle also gave the film a positive review writing: "Mixing in citizens' harrowing cellphone footage and heartbreaking emergency call recordings, Walker's teams immerse us in the flaming terror as few features have before.".

Walker, a British transplant sensitive to her outsider status, is driven by an effective mixture of empathy and intellectual curiosity as she tries to understand the ecology, economics and politics of fire.

As the narrative shifts from disaster to its aftermath — which is also, inevitably, the prelude to the next round of catastrophe — the scope broadens, even as the camera remains focused on local events and individual stories.

In a way that I can’t quite explain but that I think will be clear when you see it, Bring Your Own Brigade” strikes me as one of the early, definitive films about the current pandemic" [15] and added a few days later on his "best of Sundance" wrap-up that the movie was on his list of those he was "most looking forward to seeing again and writing about further.

Bring Your Own Brigade: Lucy Walker’s documentary on some of the worst recent California wildfires is sprawling and intimate, an issue-driven film that is full of narrative surprise and human detail.