Latest news with #Trier
Express Tribune
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Joachim Trier tearjerker takes home Cannes hearts
Trier says he succumbed to tears as he was shooting his own film. Photo: AFP Director Joachim Trier, who won the Grand Prix second prize at the Cannes film festival Saturday, makes Scandinavian films that can melt the chilliest of hearts. Sentimental Value, his moving story about a quietly fractured Norwegian family with Elle Fanning got an extraordinary 19-minute standing ovation when its Cannes premiere ended in the early hours of Thursday morning. Even the director found himself crying behind the camera as he shot it, he told AFP. "It sounds cheesy, but I wept a lot making this film because I was so moved by the actors," he said of his cast, which play members of an arty family in Oslo who struggle to communicate. "The actors are my friends. I know that they were halfway a character and halfway themselves. And that they were also dealing with stuff," said the maker of The Worst Person in the World. That film landed the Norwegian two Oscar nominations and won then-newcomer Renate Reinsve the best actress award at Cannes in 2021. Many critics said it also should have won the Palme d'Or top prize. And many thought Trier should have won it again Saturday, with some calling Sentimental Value a contender for best film of the year. "I think it was my destiny to win the Grand Prix," a rueful Trier told reporters afterwards - a reference to the failing fictional director portrayed in the film, who had also won the same prize in 1998. "I am almost as good as him now," Trier joked. Fanning said The Worst Person in the World - which brought Trier to her attention - is "easily one of the best films in the last decade or even longer. It is just perfect," she told AFP. It was the last film in his Oslo Trilogy of intelligent, bittersweet explorations of life in the Norwegian capital. 'Crying and crying' Trier is famous for the rapport he builds with his actors. "We were a family too," he told AFP of the shoot for Sentimental Value, rehearsing his script around the kitchen table of the beautiful old wooden home in Oslo where the film was shot, itself a character in the story. The heads that keep butting in Trier's on-screen family are the absent father, an arthouse filmmaker who has long been put out to grass, played by Swedish legend Stellan Skarsgard, and his stage actress daughter (Reinsve). "I think a lot of families carry woundedness and grief," Trier said. The bad old dynamics are changed by the arrival of an American star - Fanning playing someone only millimetres from her real self - a fan of the father. She comes bearing lots of Netflix dollars to revive one of his long-stalled scripts. "We don't get too many Hollywood stars wanting to be in small Norwegian-language films," Trier joked of Fanning's interest in his films. "When Joachim sent me the script, I read it and I was just crying and crying by the final page," Fanning told AFP. Trier 'magic' The director comes from a family steeped in the Scandinavian film industry. He dedicated his Grand Prix at Cannes to his grandfather, Erik Lochen, a member of the Norwegian resistance during World War II. "He was captured and his way to survive after the war was to play jazz and to make films," Trier said. Lochen's film The Hunt also competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, in 1960. It didn't win either. It was beaten by a film called La Dolce Vita. Trier admitted that that history, which is alluded to in his new film, made it all very "meta". "You're making a film about a family with your filmmaking family. And you've got a meta Hollywood star," he said. But there are not that many parallels with his biological family. "It's not like I'm throwing anyone under the bus. My whole family has actually seen the film and are very supportive," he said. The filmmaker father, he insisted, is a mash-up of great auteurs such as Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieslowski and John Cassavetes. afp
CairoScene
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Review: Joachim Trier's Most Emotionally Mature Film Yet
Review: Joachim Trier's Most Emotionally Mature Film Yet 'Sentimental Value' is directed by the acclaimed Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier. Trier is best known for introspective and emotionally resonant films like Oslo, August 31st and The Worst Person in the World. The latter earned two Academy Award nominations, including Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay. With this latest feature, Trier seems to channel the emotional precision of Ingmar Bergman. This very well might be his most mature and accomplished film to date. 'Sentimental Value' screened in the main competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. By the time this review gets posted, the winners will have been announced. If it were up to me, this film would win the Palme d'Or. There's a sense in this film that Trier has elevated his craft as a director. His work now reflects not only technical mastery but also a deeper philosophical engagement with his characters and their inner lives. Much like Bergman in films like Scenes from a Marriage, Trier employs a narrator who verbalises the inner states of his characters with startling clarity. Emotions aren't simply identified. They're evoked through vivid metaphors that draw us deeper into the character's interior world. In the opening scene, the narrator recalls how, as a child, the protagonist was asked to choose an object and describe how it felt. She chose her house. She describes how the house hated being empty. How it went through long periods of silence. It hated that feeling. This silence, of course, was due to the absence of a family member. The way the narrator describes the house's emotional state mirrors the void left behind by a family that was on the verge of collapse. When its rooms weren't filled with footsteps or laughter, it felt empty, just like her. From that very first scene, you understand the emotional architecture of the entire family. The writing is devastating. It's a great example of how good narration with vivid descriptive imagery can be a vessel for emotional truth. Co-written with his longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt, the film explores how past wounds shape the present. It's a deeply personal drama that reveals how the stories we tell can become a way of coping and understanding the pain we inherit. The story revolves around Nora Berg (Renate Reinsve), a stage actress grappling with the recent loss of her mother. Her estranged father, Gustav Berg played by Stellan Skarsgård in a powerhouse performance, resurfaces with an unexpected offer. He wants her to play the lead in his new comeback film. The project is clearly autobiographical. Nora refuses. She can't seem to forgive her father for his past mistakes. When she turns him down, Gustav casts a rising Hollywood star, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), in her place. In this role, Fanning displays an impressive range of emotions. Of course, it is not long before she realises that she's is portraying a version of Nora shaped by the director's own memories. What follows is a delicate meditation on the fragile ways art can both reopen wounds and begin to mend them. 'Sentimental Value' is a film about the redemptive power of storytelling. It explores how the act of making cinema can be a form of healing. How re-enacting the traumas of the past can offer a new way of seeing, of understanding, of letting go. In revisiting pain through performance, characters don't just relive their memories. They begin to reshape them. Trier suggests that we might not be able to escape our past. However, through the expression of art, we might just learn how to live with the pain. 'Sentimental Value' is filled with emotional honesty. It's a reminder of why we turn to cinema in the first place. It's to make sense of the world. Great films help us understand why we feel the way we do. They offer a kind of clarity that life often withholds. In doing so, films like this one help us come to terms with the people we love. Not as we wish they were, but as they truly are, flawed and deeply complex. 'Sentimental Value' will almost certainly find itself in the awards conversation by year's end. I loved everything about it.
Local Norway
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Local Norway
'It was my destiny': Norway director on Cannes runner-up prize
"Sentimental Value", his moving story about a quietly fractured Norwegian family with Elle Fanning got an extraordinary 19-minute standing ovation when its Cannes premiere ended in the early hours of Thursday morning. Even the director found himself crying behind the camera as he shot it, he told AFP. "It sounds cheesy, but I wept a lot making this film because I was so moved by the actors," he said of his cast, which play members of an arty family in Oslo who struggle to communicate. "The actors are my friends. I know that they were being halfway a character and halfway themselves. And that they were also dealing with stuff," said the maker of "The Worst Person in the World". That film landed the Norwegian two Oscar nominations and won then-newcomer Renate Reinsve the best actress award at Cannes in 2021. Many critics said it also should have won the Palme d'Or top prize. And many thought Trier should have won it again Saturday, with some calling "Sentimental Value" a contender for best film of the year. "I think it was my destiny to win the Grand Prix," a rueful Trier told reporters afterwards -- a reference to the failing fictional director portrayed in the film, who had also won the same prize in 1998. "I am almost as good as him now," Trier joked. Advertisement Fanning said "The Worst Person in the World" -- which brought Trier to her attention -- is "easily one of the best films in the last decade or even longer. It is just perfect," she told AFP. It was the last film in his "Oslo Trilogy" of intelligent, bittersweet explorations of life in the Norwegian capital. 'Crying and crying' Trier is famous for the rapport he builds with his actors. "We were a family too," he told AFP of the shoot for "Sentimental Value", rehearsing his script around the kitchen table of the beautiful old wooden home in Oslo where the film was shot, itself a character in the story. The heads that keep butting in Trier's on-screen family are the absent father, an arthouse filmmaker who has long been put out to grass, played by Swedish legend Stellan Skarsgård, and his stage actress daughter (Reinsve). "I think a lot of families carry woundedness and grief," Trier said. "And talk often doesn't help. It gets argumentative. We get stuck in our positions, the roles we give each other unconsciously." Advertisement The bad old dynamics are changed by the arrival of an American star -- Fanning playing someone only millimetres from her real self -- a fan of the father. She comes bearing lots of Netflix dollars to revive one of his long-stalled scripts. "We don't get too many Hollywood stars wanting to be in small Norwegian-language films," Trier joked of Fanning's interest in his films. "When Joachim sent me the script, I read it and I was just crying and crying by the final page," Fanning told AFP. "It is so emotional. It's a very personal piece for Joachim and you can just feel that rawness in it." Trier 'magic' The director comes from a family steeped in the Scandinavian film industry. He dedicated his Grand Prix at Cannes to his grandfather, Erik Lochen, a member of the Norwegian resistance during World War II. "He was captured and his way to survive after the war was to play jazz and to make films," Trier said. Lochen's film "The Hunt" also competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, in 1960. It didn't win either. It was beaten by a film called "La Dolce Vita". Trier admitted that that history, which is alluded to in his new movie, made it all very "meta". "You're making a film about a family with your filmmaking family. And you've got a meta Hollywood star," he said. But there are not that many parallels with his biological family. "It's not like I'm throwing anyone under the bus. My whole family has actually seen the film and are very supportive," he said. The filmmaker father, he insisted, is a mash-up of great auteurs such as Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieslowski and John Cassavetes. The "magic" that Fanning said Trier creates on set comes from taking your time, he told AFP, taking on the big themes with a light, humorous touch. "Anyone who's had experience of therapy -- and I have -- will know that it's about the silences and letting things arrive. Very often (that) is also the case with actors," said Trier. "We had quite a few moments like that in the film actually. Renate would look at me and I look at her and I say, 'What was that? That was interesting.' And we don't talk about it anymore. "But when people see it in editing, they go, 'Wow!'"
Local Norway
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Local Norway
Today in Norway: A roundup of the latest new on Monday
Norwegian film director wins Grand Prix in Cannes Joachim Trier has made Norwegian film history, winning the prestigious Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival for his latest feature, Affeksjonsverdi . 'This is overwhelming,' Trier said from the stage, after his film received a rare 19-minute standing ovation. It's the first time a Norwegian film has won the award, which is second only to the Palme d'Or. The family drama stars Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as sisters whose lives are upended by the reappearance of their father, played by Stellan Skarsgård. The film premieres in Norway on September 12. The Palme d'Or was awarded to Iranian director Jafar Panahi for It Was Just An Accident, a thriller inspired by his time in prison. Advertisement Political push to label ultra-processed foods The Centre Party and Red Party have joined forces to demand clearer labelling on ultra-processed foods, ahead of a debate in parliament on Monday. 'We have to give consumers better information,' Rødt MP Geir Jørgensen said, arguing that this was both a public health and class issue. The initiative is backed by nutrition biologist Marit Kolby, who has compared the food industry to the tobacco industry. 'They'll just have to adapt,' she said. Advertisement Explosion in Oslo: two under suspicion Two people are under suspicion after an explosion ripped through a flat in Kampen, Oslo, on Saturday evening, blowing out at least one window. Police believe something was being produced in the apartment that later ignited. "It was powerful," said Oslo police incident commander Steinar Bjerke. The two suspects are being investigated for violating Norway's fire and explosion protection laws. No one was injured, and neighbours who had evacuated were allowed back home later that evening. Homes evacuated after landslide near stranded cargo ship Police in Trøndelag evacuated four homes on Saturday afternoon after a landslide occurred near the grounded cargo ship NCL Salten in Trondheimsfjorden. The slide, which police described as 'ongoing,' is believed to have been triggered near salvage operations for the vessel. 'We're acting on advice from geotechnical experts,' incident commander Viggo Hansen told NRK. Several areas near the vessel have collapsed, with widths ranging from 10 to 50 metres. The road has also been closed and members of the public removed from the area. Advertisement Norway still weighing request to extradite terror suspect from Syria Norwegian prosecutors are still considering whether to formally request the extradition of a woman held in a Syrian detention camp, who is suspected of involvement in the 2022 mass shooting in central Oslo. The woman, a Norwegian national, is being held in the al-Roj camp in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria. She is suspected of contributing to a terrorist act and of membership in a terrorist organisation in connection with the attack on June 25th 2022, in which Zaniar Matapour shot and killed two men and injured nine others near the London Pub and Per på Hjørnet in Oslo's nightlife district. So far, no formal extradition request has been sent to Syrian authorities. But state prosecutor Sturla Henriksbø told the Klassekampen and Dagbladet newspapers that Norwegian authorities were talking to Norway's foreign affairs ministry and other government bodies about doing so. A key issue, he noted, is what would happen to the woman's young son, who is also in the camp. 'One specific question is whether it would be possible to bring her son home at the same time, so that we do not take any action that leaves a minor child behind alone in the camp,' Henriksbø said. Complicating matters further is the fact that the camp lies in territory that is not under the control of the Syrian government. However, a recent deal between Damascus and local Kurdish authorities could open a legal pathway for extradition. The woman, who has previously appealed to Norway for assistance, now says she does not wish to be returned. She declined an interview with Dagbladet, but her lawyer, Petar Sekulic, confirmed her opposition to extradition. She denies all charges.
France 24
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
Norway's Trier is bridesmaid again at Cannes
"Sentimental Value", his moving story about a quietly fractured Norwegian family with Elle Fanning got an extraordinary 19-minute standing ovation when its Cannes premiere ended in the early hours of Thursday morning. Even the director found himself crying behind the camera as he shot it, he told AFP. "It sounds cheesy, but I wept a lot making this film because I was so moved by the actors," he said of his cast, which play members of an arty family in Oslo who struggle to communicate. "The actors are my friends. I know that they were being halfway a character and halfway themselves. And that they were also dealing with stuff," said the maker of "The Worst Person in the World". That film landed the Norwegian two Oscar nominations and won then-newcomer Renate Reinsve the best actress award at Cannes in 2021. Many critics said it also should have won the Palme d'Or top prize. And many thought Trier should have won it again Saturday, with some calling "Sentimental Value" a contender for best film of the year. "I think I was my destiny to win the Grand Prix," a rueful Trier told reporters afterwards -- a reference to the failing fictional director portrayed in the film, who had also won the same prize in 1998. "I am almost as good as him now," Trier joked. Fanning said "The Worst Person in the World" -- which brought Trier to her attention -- is "easily one of the best films in the last decade or even longer. It is just perfect," she told AFP. It was the last film in his "Oslo Trilogy" of intelligent, bittersweet explorations of life in the Norwegian capital. 'Crying and crying' Trier is famous for the rapport he builds with his actors. "We were a family too," he told AFP of the shoot for "Sentimental Value", rehearsing his script around the kitchen table of the beautiful old wooden home in Oslo where the film was shot, itself a character in the story. The heads that keep butting in Trier's on-screen family are the absent father, an arthouse filmmaker who has long been put out to grass, played by Swedish legend Stellan Skarsgard, and his stage actress daughter (Reinsve). "I think a lot of families carry woundedness and grief," Trier said. "And talk often doesn't help. It gets argumentative. We get stuck in our positions, the roles we give each other unconsciously." The bad old dynamics are changed by the arrival of an American star -- Fanning playing someone only millimetres from her real self -- a fan of the father. She comes bearing lots of Netflix dollars to revive one of his long-stalled scripts. "We don't get too many Hollywood stars wanting to be in small Norwegian-language films," Trier joked of Fanning's interest in his films. "When Joachim sent me the script, I read it and I was just crying and crying by the final page," Fanning told AFP. "It is so emotional. It's a very personal piece for Joachim and you can just feel that rawness in it." Trier 'magic' The director comes from a family steeped in the Scandinavian film industry. He dedicated his Grand Prix at Cannes to his grandfather, Erik Lochen, a member of the Norwegian resistance during World War II. "He was captured and his way to survive after the war was to play jazz and to make films," Trier said. Lochen's film "The Hunt" also competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, in 1960. It didn't win either. It was beaten by a film called "La Dolce Vita". Trier admitted that that history, which is alluded to in his new movie, made it all very "meta". "You're making a film about a family with your filmmaking family. And you've got a meta Hollywood star," he said. But there are not that many parallels with his biological family. "It's not like I'm throwing anyone under the bus. My whole family has actually seen the film and are very supportive," he said. The filmmaker father, he insisted, is a mash-up of great auteurs such as Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieslowski and John Cassavetes. The "magic" that Fanning said Trier creates on set comes from taking your time, he told AFP, taking on the big themes with a light, humorous touch. "Anyone who's had experience of therapy -- and I have -- will know that it's about the silences and letting things arrive. Very often (that) is also the case with actors," said Trier. "We had quite a few moments like that in the film actually. Renate would look at me and I look at her and I say, 'What was that? That was interesting.' And we don't talk about it anymore.
