Joachim Trier’s melancholic comedy drama explores family, memory, and the mitigating power of art. The film won the Grand Prix at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and has been nominated for the 2026 Oscars by Norway.
After years of estrangement, sisters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes see their father Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) at their mother’s funeral. Nora is an acclaimed actress and her father is a formerly successful film director. Gustav invites his daughter to play the lead in his new film, but Nora, whose relationship with her father has always been complicated, refuses, and a Hollywood star (Elle Fanning) takes the role. Rehearsals take place in their family home, which Gustav plans to use as the set, and move both the father and his daughters. Work, which once separated them, now offers an opportunity for a fragile reconciliation.
The house, on which Nora wrote an essay in school, is one of the film’s central images. With its Ikea furniture and old vases that have no value for anyone apart from the family, it stores secrets, painful memories, and traces of happy and sad days. In Ingmar Bergman’s films, the house often acts as a stage for family drama. Joachim Trier makes the metaphor quite literal, but does not focus solely on the ruthless study of distressing relationships, but also shows how wounds can heal.
Sentimental Value
Director: Joachim Trier
Norway, France, Denmark, Germany, 2025. 133 min.
18+