Joachim Trier has directed yet another highly acclaimed film that ended up with a 19-minute standing ovation and the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival last spring. Now the film, Sentimental Value, has been selected as Norway’s candidate for an Academy Award.
The latest film by Norwegian director Joachim Trier (center) won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where cast and crew assembled in all their finery. PHOTO: Norwegian Film Institute
It hasn’t even opened at home in Norway yet, where it won’t start being shown in cinemas until September 12. Trier’s latest film has already made the rounds of international film festivals, though, where it won rave reviews and now may win an Oscar. The understated Trier seems pleased but also said he feels under pressure.
“I have made perhaps my most emotional film,” he told Norwegian news service NTB this week. “I haven’t spared anything when it comes to hitting the painful points in a family. Now I hope people here at home receive it well and think it’s okay.”
It was certainly very “okay” at Cannes and almost everywhere else it’s been shown. The Norwegian Oscar Committee, made up of representatives from the Norwegian film industry, film critics and led by the director of the Norwegian Film Institute, stated they had “chosen a film that not only impressed us but also profoundly moved us.” They called it “exquisitely well-crafted in every aspect” and described Trier himself as “a filmmaker who is confident, assured and fully at the height of his story-telling talent.”
Trier has an international following after also directing films including “The Worst Person in the World” in 2021 and “Louder than Bombs” in 2015, both of which also won acclaim at Cannes. PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons
It’s Trier’s sixth feature film and his third to be shown at Cannes, where he also served as a jury member in 2014 and 2022. Called Affeksjonsverdi in Norwegian, it was filmed in Oslo last autumn and tells the story of a talented but troubled family, where two sisters are reunited with their estranged father, a once-renowned film director himself. The father, played by Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, offers one of the daughters a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film, but when she turns it down for various reasons, he gives it to a young Hollywood star who lands in the center of family conflict.
The film also stars Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve, who won raves for her leading role in Trier’s film “The Worst Person in the World” from 2021. Trier told NTB that for him, the film reflects his need “to communicate things in my life … things I wonder about, un-said things in a family, things between sisters, parents and children.” They’re the sort of things, Trier thinks, that people “ponder over the more you live.”
The Danish-born 51-year-old filmmaker stressed how he lives in Oslo himself, and delivers his children to day care every day. “My material comes from observing daily life and Norwegian reality,” he told NTB. “I’m not interested in taking off for Hollywood and dreaming about life as a star. No, my privilege is to be able to make personal films.”
The film has had good reviews during recent pre-release showings in Oslo, where pop star Charlotte Emma Aitchison, better known as Charli XCX, introduced it at a private showing just before she took the stage at a large outdoor music festival this summer. She and American actress Elle Fanning, who’s in the cast, declared it a “Joachim Trier Summer,” both in Norway and the US.
Trier’s new film is part of what some have called “a new golden age” in Norwegian filmmaking. Trier told magazine D2 earlier this year that it’s important to retain film talent in Norway and continue to tell “local stories.” There are, meanwhile, no less than seven Norwegian films currently playing at local cinemas and several more premiering later this fall.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
