The Palme d’Or-winning Fjord is blood-boiling – but magnificent
The Palme d’Or-winning Fjord is blood-boiling – but magnificent
Robbie CollinSat, November 14, 2026 at 9:00 AM UTC
0
The Gheorghius: father Mihai (Sebastian Stan), mother Lisbet (Renate Reinsve) and their five children - Neon
Many are the Marvel stars who pledge to use their newfound profiles and leverage for the greater artistic good, but none walk the walk quite as admirably as Sebastian Stan. After the straightforwardly tremendous A Different Man and his respectable turn as a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice, the 43-year-old now stars in this magnificently controlled yet blood-boiling drama from Romanian writer and director Cristian Mungiu.
Set in Norway, Fjord – the worthy winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes – is about a Christian immigrant family from Bucharest who find themselves sucked into a serpentine child-protection nightmare after their liberal Scandinavian neighbours bridle at their traditional ways. Meet the Gheorghius: father Mihai (Stan, bearded and balding), mother Lisbet (Sentimental Value’s Renate Reinsve), and five children whose ages range between six months and the mid-teens.
Their devout faith and strict attitude to discipline raise their neighbours’ hackles. So when their eldest daughter arrives at school with bruises on her shoulder and cheek, it is the excuse the staff were looking for to call in the social workers – and the police.
Mungiu has made a slow-burn provocation that knows exactly which buttons it is pressing – yet which also grapples with the thorny issues it raises, from the limits and contradictions of multiculturalism to public-sector careerism, with an unflinching moral seriousness.
Advertisement
The performances and casting are perfect. Stan and Reinsve work in a quietly intense register that is exactly right for their characters, while the supporting parts are filled with actors who – and I mean this as a compliment – couldn’t look or sound more like pious busybodies.
Stan is perfectly cast as the father who cannot comprehend the social norms of his new country - Picturehouse Entertainment
Stan plays Mihai as a man who simply doesn’t see, let alone comprehend, the social rule-set of the country to which he has moved. The allegations of abuse are also made harder to deny by Mihai’s initial statement – made in his second language – in which a concession that he has spanked his children becomes an admission of repeated physical abuse. And his attempts to publicise the case internationally lead to support from exactly the sorts of groups of which a district court judge with liberal sympathies might take a dim view.
Eventually, the Romanian diaspora also pitches in, including two diplomats who come up from Oslo at Mihai’s behest. Discussing the Gheorghius’ case, one expresses his astonishment that the Norwegian people could have been so silly as to hand so much power to a matrix of self-serving bureaucrats. “They didn’t have communism,” explains the other, shaking his head.
In cinemas now
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
