Colossal Youth was shot on DV in long, static takes; it also mixes documentary and fiction storytelling.

[1] "Many of the lost souls of Ossos and In Vanda’s Room return in the spectral landscape of Colossal Youth,.... What results is a form of ghost story, a tale of derelict, dispossessed people living in the past and present at the same time..."[2] The film opens with a shot of a doorway in a run-down neighborhood.

Furniture comes crashing down on the pavement from a second-floor window, followed by a close shot of a woman holding a knife and ranting.

At other times, Ventura is shown in his new, bright but almost barren, government-provided apartment, which contrasts sharply with the squalid and dark tenements that are due to be destroyed.

In a New York Times review, Manohla Dargis called Colossal Youth one of the most "misunderstood" films at Cannes, remarking, "Beautifully photographed, this elliptical, sometime confounding, often mysterious and wholly beguiling mixture of fiction and nonfiction looks and sounds as if it were made on another planet.

"[5] And in a 2008 review, critic David Balfour describes the film as "a truly remarkable work from a man of unique vision," adding "It will divide those see it, even those who stay with it.