{"id":591054,"date":"2026-05-18T18:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T18:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/591054\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T18:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T18:48:09","slug":"fjord-review-sebastian-stan-and-renate-reinsve-lead-culture-war-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/591054\/","title":{"rendered":"Fjord Review: Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve Lead Culture War Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Intolerance assumes a more progressive sheen with Cristian Mungiu\u2019s \u201cFjord<\/a>,\u201d a characteristically fraught and tangled drama in which the \u201cR.M.N.\u201d<\/a> filmmaker continues to vivisect the reactionary pitfalls of globalization \u2014\u00a0this time in Norway, which the annual World Happiness Report<\/a> consistently lists as one of the happiest countries in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perhaps that explains why Romanian software engineer Mihai Gheorghiu (a bald Sebastian Stan<\/a>, looking more like Damon Lindelof than the Winter Soldier) was so quick to move his brood from the middle of Bucharest to a scenic fjord in Stranda after his parents died; Mihai\u2019s wife Lisbet (Renate Reinsve<\/a>, her performance like a shaken willow) was raised in the area, and her mother is supposedly still around to help care for the couple\u2019s five kids. The religiously conservative Gheorghius might not mesh right away with the ultra-liberal utopianism of their new home, but Jesus didn\u2019t have a problem with good schools and excellent healthcare. He said \u201cthou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,\u201d and for the most part the Gheorghius appear to live by that credo as they settle into a secular community by the sea.<\/p>\n

\"Diego<\/a> \"Léa<\/a> <\/p>\n

Their woke and godless neighbors \u2014 who own televisions and don\u2019t know how to discipline their kids \u2014 are a different story. They try to be nice about it, of course, as seeming unkind is among the worst of liberal sins, but the schoolmaster (Markus Scarth T\u00f8nseth) who lives nearby looks ever-so-slightly askance at the strict point system that Mihai applies to his children (don\u2019t ask), or his choice to punish the older two by refusing to let them attend a birthday party they can hear from their bedroom window. Never mind that Mats\u2019 teenage daughter Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen) is a troubled soul who steals the family boat every night and slashes her wrists to get a rise out of her friends, it\u2019s the well-mannered Catholics next door who are doing things backwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And in some ways, I\u2019d argue, they are. I suspect the majority of Mungiu\u2019s audience shares my disgust with Mihai\u2019s belief that gay marriage is an affront to heaven. By the same token, I belong to a generation of American parents who would cut off their own hands if they ever laid them upon their kids (Mihai admits to slapping a butt or two back in the day), and I\u2019m sure I\u2019d judge someone for not letting their children listen to secular music even though I\u2019d happily pay all the money on Earth for the chance to go back in time and stop my six-year-old from hearing that Ice Spice song from the latest Spongebob movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, it\u2019s hard not to have some major reservations when the Norwegian Child Welfare Service determines that the small bruises a teacher finds on Mihai and Lisbet\u2019s eldest daughter (Vanessa Ceban as Elia) are reason enough to take all five of their kids into custody while they conduct a thorough investigation. Mungiu\u2019s penchant for soul-scorching sequence shots is at a minimum in this movie, and his visual approach only grows more formally restrained as its story builds towards the stuff of a familiar courtroom drama, but the uninterrupted scene where government workers come into Lisbet\u2019s home and tell her they\u2019ll be leaving with all of Lisbet\u2019s children \u2014 including the new baby who still breastfeeds! \u2014\u00a0is as stomach-churning as anything in the director\u2019s body of work. \u201cWe\u2019re here to help,\u201d they say. \u201cWe have to look out for the best interests of the children,\u201d they say. In truth, it feels more like a state-funded abduction. It feels like the kind of thing that should inspire any good liberal to take to the streets.<\/p>\n

And so, under the gray-periwinkle skies of a perfect Norwegian winter, the Gheorghius find themselves punished for their failure to assimilate into the values of a country that most of them have never lived in before. Whereas earlier in his career Mungiu may have entertained the possibility that Mihai actually is a violent monster at heart (a possibility that would have been fueled by the festering rage of Stan\u2019s rigorous and restrained tri-lingual performance), here the filmmaker is content to prize ambivalence over ambiguity; the very first scene of the movie might demand a second look, but I tend to believe that \u201cFjord\u201d gives us all the evidence we need to know that the Romanian transplants are getting railroaded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If that sounds like the recipe for a faith-based persecution drama (or so much worse: an 146-minute dose of Bill Maher-like sermonizing against the messily applied impulse to make the world a better place), rest assured that Mungiu is much less interested in defending biblical values than he is in interrogating the nuclear friction at the root of even the \u201cnicest\u201d culture clash. It\u2019s a bit convenient that the Gheorghius\u2019 kids are compliant little angels while Mats\u2019 daughter is the closest thing their town has to a certified hellion, but the fact remains that Mihai and Lisbet are being persecuted for their differences in a society that prides itself on its freedoms. It\u2019s even suggested that the children\u2019s testimony \u2014\u00a0the most damning evidence the state has against their father \u2014\u00a0might be the result of a language-related miscommunication.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Gheorghius are the victims of good intentions, which is of little comfort to them as the seasons change and they continue to be separated from their kids. A slow-burn snowball that achieves much \u2014 or at least some \u2014 of Mungiu\u2019s signature entropy despite eschewing the more overt bigotries that fueled his previous films, \u201cFjord\u201d digs its heels deeper and deeper into the situation as Mihai and Lisbet do their best to cooperate with the investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lisbet\u2019s relationship with Mats\u2019 ailing father offers a curious inversion of the movie\u2019s cultural mores (Lisbet, a caretaker at the local nursing facility, resists the old man\u2019s request to die with dignity), while Mihai is compelled to amplify \u2014\u00a0and possibly even exaggerate \u2014\u00a0his hardline ideology in order to whip up viral support from conservative protestors across Europe. Extremism begets extremism, as tends to be the case in Mungiu\u2019s work, and while the eventual court battle lacks the same intensity that allows \u201c4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days\u201d and \u201cBeyond the Hills\u201d to grip you in a chokehold, \u201cFjord\u201d gradually distills its own sense of urgency from the deprivations that it fosters among its children. Among all of its children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to learn to apologize when you\u2019re wrong,\u201d Mihai instructs his kids during the opening scene, which takes place in the immediate aftermath of an unseen punishment. But none of the adults in this movie \u2014\u00a0Mihai included \u2014\u00a0are able to practice what they preach, a failure of perspective that allows the divides between them to grow as thick as the walls that protect the local school from the avalanches that crash down upon it whenever the drama gets too intense. \u201cWhat does it mean to be a good neighbor?\u201d, \u201cFjord\u201d wonders in Mungiu\u2019s usual tones, its probing handheld wide shots infused with the callous indifference of the gods. And why is that so rarely a question that people feel required to ask of themselves?<\/p>\n

Grade: B+<\/p>\n

\u201cFjord\u201d premiered in Competition at the 2026 Cannes<\/a> Film<\/a> Festival. NEON will release it in theaters later this year.<\/p>\n

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/a>\u00a0to our newsletter In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Intolerance assumes a more progressive sheen with Cristian Mungiu\u2019s \u201cFjord,\u201d a characteristically fraught and tangled drama in which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[160823,96,2332,198149,2839,129,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-591054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cannes","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-fjord","tag-movies","tag-reviews","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}