Film screening: Fjord

“A brilliantly knotted social drama” (Variety) — On November 10, Scandinavia House presents a special screening of the 2026 Palme d’Or winner and Romania’s official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards: the thorny and riveting drama Fjord.

Romanian-Norwegian couple Lisbet (Renate Reinsve) and Mihai (Sebastian Stan) move with their five children to Lisbet’s remote Norwegian hometown, where their conservative Evangelical beliefs set them apart from the otherwise progressive community.
When they come under suspicion for their parenting, Norway’s child protection system enters their private lives, and as their beliefs face public scrutiny, a clash of values turns into an morally prickly battle over who gets to decide what constitutes a good family.

A foundational figure of 21st century Romanian cinema, Cristian Mungiu earned his second Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for this searing, discomfiting social drama. Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve give superbly restrained performances as Mihai and Lisbet. Mungiu refuses to supply easy answers or simple paths to identification in this compelling provocation, which poses unresolvable questions to viewers about our biases and presumptions.
Fjord returns the director to many of his recurring themes: the freedom of the individual within contemporary political systems, the culture clash between modernity and tradition, and how human care can imperceptibly evolve into a form of control.