After returning home from the tunnel system of the city's ring roads with a bag containing, among other things, marijuana, hashish and opium, he sorts the drugs and bakes two trays full of hash cookies.

Amir also supplies a few prostitutes, including a trans man, with drugs for free, while he helps a widow save her son from the throes of addiction by prescribing him a mixture of pills and opium tea.

[3] According to his co-producer Sina Ataeian Dena, Ahmadzadeh has come under investigation by the security ministry and is under constant surveillance by an interrogator who monitors his text messages.

[8] The Locarno Film Festival, under artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro, unsuccessfully called on the Iranian government to immediately release Ahmadzadeh.

[3] Urs Bühler of Neue Zürcher Zeitung praised Critical Zone in a festival summary as "a fascinatingly intoxicating trip through Tehran".

Wilhelm observes that Critical Zone adopts "the car ride motif that is so typical of Iranian films" and strikes upon "impressive atmospheric images".

[11] Patrick Heidmann of Stuttgarter Nachrichten assessed Critical Zone as an "impetuous, energetic, also unnerving and visually impressive film", one which "represents a new generation in Iranian cinema and shows, in a much less claustrophobic manner than others, why and for whom a radical change in Iran is overdue".

Heidmann also commented that, although the film was shot before the protests that broke out in Iran in autumn 2022, all of the "conflicts, struggles and topics that are at stake there can already be found in the Locarno winner".

[3] Susanna Petrin of St. Galler Tagblatt made the same observation: Critical Zone depicted "the anger of the young generation" and it seemed to her as if Ahmadzadeh "had already foreseen the women's revolt during filming".

Petrin found a scene particularly impressive in which a young woman without a hijab leans out of the window of a moving car and screams from her soul "46 years of oppression of women by the imposed culture of radical Islamic clerics".

[6] Michael Ranze of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung viewed the Golden Leopard win as simultaneously an "artistic recognition and a sign of solidarity with the filmmakers in Iran".

[6] The film's co-producer Sina Ataeian Dena, who had earlier expressed concerns for Ahmadzadeh's safety due to the inclusion of Critical Zone at Locarno, predicted that winning the Golden Leopard could potentially protect the director: "Experience shows that the more you are in the spotlight, the safer you are in Iran".