A new film featuring Norway’s stunning scenery along with its strict child welfare laws and culture clashes won the top prize at the Cannes International Film Festival over the weekend. It may not win the hearts and minds of Norwegian officials, though, who often struggle with integration issues as do immigrants.
The film simply called Fjord was shot at various locations in Sunnmøre, known for its magestic mountains that surround deep fjords and scenic settlements. As film critic Ingrid Åbergsjord wrote in newspaper Aftenposten, though, Fjord is by no means good advertising for Norway, portraying instead a cold and bureaucratic society.
It won a lengthy standing ovation when shown at Cannes and late Saturday night, its Romanian director Cristian Mungiu could also accept the famed film festival’s most sought-after prize, the Palme D’Or, known in Norway as Gullpalmen. Joining Mungiu on the stage in Cannes were the film’s two stars, Sebastian Stan and Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve, who play the Romanian father and Norwegian mother of five children, all trying to start new lives in a beautiful landscape.
Instead they all run into one challenge after another, not least after teachers at the local school begin to suspect that the children may be subjected to violence at home. Child welfare authorities are alerted and all five children are ultimately taken away from their parents and put into the care of the Norwegian children’s protection agency Barnevernet.
Such incidents have often made headlines in Norway, and set off a wave of protests abroad and at Norwegian embassies from Washington DC to Bucharest. The film is largely based on a child welfare case from 2015 that involved a deeply religious Norwegian-Romanian family that had settled in Western Norway. In that and other cases, Norwegian officials often felt compelled to publicly defend Barnevernet, since physically punishing children is illegal in Norway and the state is most concerned with protecting children from abusive parents.
The Norwegian government’s minister in charge of culture, Lubna Jaffery of the Labour Party, was nonetheless congratulating the cast and crew of Fjord on Sunday, and noting that 2026 has been “an outstanding year” for Norwegian film, after others have also won top prizes at the Academy Awards in the US. “This is another milestone for Norwegian film and our highly capable film mulieu,” Jaffery told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK). The film will open in Norway early this autumn.
Norwegian actress Reinsve, meanwhile, is becoming a regular on the stage at Cannes, after starring in other Norwegian films that have won major prizes at the film festival including Verdens verste menneske (The Worst Person in the World) in 2021 and Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value) last year. Both went on to be nominated for Academy Awards in Hollywood and Sentimental Value won an Oscar earlier this year.
Fjord’s Romanian director Mungiu has won several major film prizes, and he thanked “everyone here” for relying on him to deliver another. They included Norwegian producer Dyveke Bjørkly Graver, who told NRK on Sunday that “I had an idea we’d win a prize, but that it would be Gullpalmen (Palme D’Or) was a surprise and fantastic.” She said the entire production was filmed in Norway with Norwegian crew and mostly Norwegian actors. “This is historic,” she said, as she emerged from the prize ceremony and set off “to find the rest of the team” and celebrate.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
