Sentimental Value is a 2025 Norwegian drama film, directed by Joachim Trier, who co-wrote the script with Eskil Vogt. It had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May (where it won the prestigious Grand Prix) and was released in the UK on Boxing Day.

The film centres on the difficult relationship between Norwegian film director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) and his two grown-up daughters: Nora (Renate Reinsve – star of Trier’s The Worst Person in the World) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas). Borg had left his family (and Norway) when his marriage to Sissel had failed but after she dies, he returns to reclaim the family house. His daughters have grown to resent him, partly because of his extended absence, partly due to his drinking problem, and partly due to his obsessive focus on his own career at the expense of his family.

However, Borg’s career is now on the slide. He has written a new film, inspired by his mother’s suicide, with Nora in mind as the lead actress: she is a successful stage actress, and he feels that her participation will make funding the project easier. When Nora refuses even to read the script, Borg offers the role to American film-star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning). As well as Nora, Borg wishes to use Agnes’s son to play an important role in the film, just as he used Agnes in one of his early films when she was just a child, but Agnes also objects to this.

This is effectively a story about art versus family responsibility: Borg believes that to become a great artist, one must focus entirely on the art at the expense of all other matters; as he remarks to his daughters, ‘you will never write Ulysses while driving the kids to soccer practice’.

The acting is uniformly excellent and the writing and direction, the style of which is clearly a nod to that of Ingmar Bergman, is Trier’s most mature and accomplished to date. My only criticism is that it feels just a little baggy at times and, had its 133 minutes been condensed to around two hours with some judicious cutting, it might have been even better.

Having said that, Sentimental Value is a very good film indeed and will undoubtedly be a contender at all the coming award ceremonies. I heartily recommend it.