By_Suraj Karowa/ ANW Entertainment
November 12, 2025
In the dimly lit corridors of family secrets and creative egos, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value emerges as a poignant dissection of legacy, loss, and the inexorable pull of art over blood.
Premiering to critical acclaim at Cannes earlier this year and now rolling out in limited U.S. theaters via NEON, the Norwegian director’s latest film reunites him with his Oslo Trilogy collaborators, including a luminous Renate Reinsve.
But it’s Stellan Skarsgård’s turn as the mercurial patriarch Gustav Borg—a fading auteur haunted by his own masterpieces—that threatens to etch this drama into Oscar contention.
At 73, the Swedish veteran, known for his chameleon-like turns in everything from Dune to Mamma Mia!, delivers a performance that’s equal parts venomous charm and quiet devastation, positioning him squarely in the awards conversation for the first time.
Gustav isn’t your typical villain; he’s a vortex. The film opens with the death of his ex-wife, yanking him back into the orbit of daughters Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), women who’ve spent decades thawing from the frost of his neglect.
Nora, a celebrated stage actress, masks her resentment behind polished poise, while Agnes, once a child star in one of Gustav’s arthouse epics, has retreated into domestic anonymity.
Their quirky Oslo family home— a sprawling, time-capsule relic stuffed with faded scripts and half-forgotten heirlooms—serves as the stage for a four-generational unraveling. Trier, fresh off fatherhood since his 2021 breakout The Worst Person in the World, infuses the narrative with a newfound tenderness, probing the “unspoken stuff” that festers in even the most articulate households.
“I wanted to explore transference,” Trier told ANW during a recent London press junket. “What do we inherit from our parents, and what do we pass on? Time feels so short now—kids make you hyper-aware of that.”
Co-written with longtime partner Eskil Vogt, Sentimental Value eschews the millennial angst of Trier’s earlier works like Reprise (2006) and Oslo, August 31st (2011) for something more elegiac. Here, the sisters’ reunion isn’t a tidy reconciliation; it’s a seismic confrontation with a father whose identity is synonymous with celluloid.
Gustav’s return isn’t benevolent—he arrives with a screenplay in hand, a bespoke role for Nora that reeks of paternal overreach. When she demurs, he pivots to a wide-eyed American ingénue, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning, delightfully out of her depth), forcing Nora to watch her own emotional inheritance auctioned off on screen.
Skarsgård, who has collaborated with titans like Ingmar Bergman, Lars von Trier, and Denis Villeneuve, approached Gustav not as autobiography but as archetype. “He’s an artist first—that’s his curse,” the actor explained, his gravelly voice laced with wry amusement.
“Compromise the work, and you compromise yourself. It’s seductive, that fear of erasure.” Far from the revenge fantasy of skewering real-life directors (though Skarsgård admits the irony tickled him), his Gustav is a study in late-blooming vulnerability: irascible one moment, disarmingly avuncular the next.
In a pivotal dinner scene, he lectures his daughters on the artist’s necessary selfishness—”You can’t write Ulysses and coach soccer”—a line that lands like a gut punch, exposing the chasm between his genius and their grievances.
Reinsve, Trier’s muse since The Worst Person in the World (which netted her an Oscar nod), channels Nora’s quiet fury with surgical precision. “Joachim sees layers in you that you haven’t excavated yet,” she reflected. “He pushes you to that raw edge—uncontrollable, real.”
At 37, the actress, who began performing at nine, grapples with Gustav’s ethos head-on: “I’ve wondered if that’s the fire that fuels me. But I hope not.”
Lilleaas, in her breakout role as Agnes, offers a counterpoint of fierce maternal resolve. “Selfishness isn’t a prerequisite for art—I reject that,” she insisted. “I won’t be the parent who leaves scars. I’ll own my flaws, look my son in the eye someday.”
Trier’s sleight-of-hand elevates the material beyond domestic drama. Flashbacks to Gustav’s oeuvre— a vertiginous long take of orphans fleeing Nazis through a train window, a cunning mirror gag in the finale—affirm his bona fides while underscoring the sisters’ collateral damage.
A Vertigo-inspired subplot adds Hitchcockian vertigo (pun intended), twisting sibling rivalry into psychological thriller territory. Comparisons to Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums abound for the eccentric ensemble and wry humor, but Trier’s unflinching gaze on grief sets it apart.
“Families are messy symphonies of the unsaid,” he mused. “That’s the beauty—and the terror.”
Production notes reveal Trier’s commitment to analog authenticity: shot on 35mm film, with the director retaining final cut—a bulwark against studio meddling.
Ironically, Gustav’s arc catapults him into the maw of modern Hollywood, where he endures a cringeworthy Netflix junket and the existential dread of a straight-to-streaming fate. Trier, ever the cinephile, clarifies: “It’s not a takedown—Netflix champions bold voices. But why not longer theatrical windows? The big screen matters.”
No bad blood here; the streamer has greenlit several of his peers’ visions, elevating global cinema. Sentimental Value bowed in U.S. theaters on November 7, mere days after Norway tapped it as their Best International Feature submission.
With the Academy shortlist looming on December 16, buzz swirls around Skarsgård for Supporting Actor—a category he’s orbited (Dune: Part Two, 2024) but never headlined.
Fanning’s fish-out-of-water turn and Reinsve’s soul-baring lead could snag nods too, while Trier eyes a directing berth, building on his 2022 breakthrough.
In an era of franchise fatigue, Sentimental Value reminds us why indie darlings endure: they mirror our fractured selves back at us, demanding we confront the art we make—and the families we break—in the process. Gustav’s final line, whispered over a flickering projector, lingers: “Sentiment is the thief of time.” Trier’s film steals it back, one aching frame at a time.