Reviewing Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value (2025)

Gustav Borg left (played by Stellan Skarsgård) and Nora Borg right (Played by Renate Reinsve)

Sentimental Value is a 2025 Norwegian film directed by Joachim Trier, starring Stellan Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve, and Elle Fanning. The basic premise of the film is that a washed up film director, played by Stellan Skarsgård, reunites with his estranged daughters Nora and Agnes to make a comeback film. Nora initially rejects the idea of making a film with her father but soon realizes that her role was given to a rising Hollywood star, Rachel Kemp (played by Elle Fanning). 

The film was nominated by the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Trier), Actress (Reinsve), Supporting Actor (Skarsgård), Supporting Actress (Fanning), Original Screenplay, and Editing, marking a historic moment in Norwegian cinema and director Joachim Trier’s career. At the Oscars, Sentimental Value was only able to win in the Best International Feature category which is the first time in Norwegian film history that they have won.

Joachim Trier, the director, continues to use similar stylistic elements and humor previously seen in his 2021 film, The Worst Person in the World, also with Renate Reinsve. Trier’s films have been broadly characterized as “melancholic meditations concerned with existential questions of love, ambition, memory, and identity." 

The cinematography and imagery in this film is a highlight, employing 35mm and 16mm film to capture the nostalgic feeling that the story partly revolves upon. The usage of kodak stock film captures the warmth of many of the spaces the story takes place in and the vintage “grainy” feel that is very apparent when watching. The camera movements during the film are largely smooth dolly movements, which center around the characters and their intimacy. The cinematography, when inside the family house, uses frames (doorways and windows) to create a sense of haunting that is present in their house. 

Sentimental Value offers us a view into a family that is fractured and that lives in a house that tells the story of older generations of that same family. Cinematically, the film is breathtaking and extremely reminiscent of Joachim Trier’s earlier films. The best International Feature Academy Award also cements Sentimental Value as one of the greatest Norwegian films ever made.