Fjord Review: Sebastian Stan’s TIFF 2026 Drama Will Spark Debate

“Fjord” emerged as an unexpected Palme d’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival. It was not the best-reviewed entry in competition, nor was it Cristian Mungiu’s most widely celebrated film. Many critics viewed the anti-Putin thriller “Minotaur” or the Thomas Mann biopic “Fatherland” as more obvious consensus choices. But perhaps that is precisely why Park Chan-wook’s jury selected “Fjord”: it refuses to be a safe choice. Whatever your politics, this is a film built to unsettle, provoke and even infuriate its audience. The reasons for that anger, however, will vary dramatically from viewer to viewer.

Mungiu has said the film draws on several cases involving conservative immigrant families who became entangled with Norway’s Child Welfare Services. Its closest real-world parallel is the case of the Bodnariu family. In the film, the family is renamed the Gheorghius. Mihai (Sebastian Stan), a Romanian father, and Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), his Norwegian wife, have recently moved from Romania to Norway with their five children. Their liberal neighbors initially welcome them, and Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), an impulsive lesbian who lives next door, forms a friendship with the oldest daughter, Elia Gheorghiu (Vanessa Ceban). Then Elia arrives at school with bruises. When social workers ask whether her father has hit the children, she says yes—and the children are immediately taken from their parents.

The film then becomes a nerve-racking legal drama that withholds any definitive account of what really happened. The setup may recall the 2023 Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall,” but the subject here is considerably more combustible (“Anatomy of a slap on the butt,” reads the film’s most liked review on Letterboxd). “Fjord” gives nearly every adult character a perspective that makes sense—and a reason to resent them. With the children largely excluded from that moral judgment, the film asks liberal viewers to understand religious conservatives who defend limited corporal punishment while asking conservatives to confront the trauma of immigrant families being separated by the state. The conversations after a screening could be genuinely illuminating. Online, they will probably be unbearable.

Sebastian Stan continues to use his Marvel Cinematic Universe profile as a springboard into difficult, unconventional parts. Mihai does not demand the same radical physical transformation as his Donald Trump in “The Apprentice” or Edward in “A Different Man,” but Stan is still convincingly stripped of movie-star polish as the balding patriarch. A simmering anger sits beneath Mihai’s controlled exterior, making him quietly threatening. His decision to work with extremist groups in building the family’s defense will alienate many viewers. At the same time, Stan conveys a man who appears to believe every word he says. Mihai’s blunt sincerity—and the language barriers he encounters while speaking English and Norwegian—can work against him in court, yet they also make his case feel authentic.

EXPLORE MORE: Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Doomsday’ bunker sparks frenzy for multi-million apocalypse homes with fire moats and water cannons – NewsFinale

Renate Reinsve gives Lisbet a similarly unexpected dimension. She is conservative and deeply religious, but she is not presented as a passive tradwife stereotype. She works in a nursing home and tries to live according to Christian principles in ways that even a secular society can respect, although the limits of how openly she may express her faith at work become a source of conflict. After the children are removed, officials tell her they can be returned if she acknowledges that Mihai abused her. The problem is that, from Lisbet’s perspective, there is nothing to confess.

Mihai wants to turn the family’s legal battle into a broader political movement, while Lisbet would rather treat it as a private crisis. She seeks help from their neighbor Mia (Lisa Carlehed), a lawyer whose arguments come closest to articulating the film’s position despite its commitment to chilly neutrality. Mia offers a liberal defense of multiculturalism, arguing that a pluralistic society must tolerate neighbors whose beliefs may be deeply offensive. That principle has limits, of course: harmful conduct is not the same as an unpopular opinion. Still, the prosecution seems at least as concerned with what the Gheorghius believe as with what they may actually have done.

I do not know enough about Norwegian society to determine whether Mungiu’s portrait of the country’s welfare system is fair or built partly from strawman arguments. Since the film is rooted in a real case, its difficult cultural and political questions are legitimate subjects for debate. Several viewers who attended the Q&A after the TIFF premiere came away less enthusiastic after hearing Mungiu explain his centrist view that left-wing “cancel culture” helped fuel the rise of right-wing extremism. I disagree with that analysis, but I do not think the film itself makes that argument, so it has not changed my assessment. It was also striking to watch “Fjord” on the same day as “Club Kid,” a film with nearly opposite tone and characterization that nevertheless explores a similar clash between flawed parenting and an overreaching legal system.

Researching the case afterward did, however, reveal one major problem. The most sensational development in the film’s legal resolution—the moment that prompted audible gasps in the theater—was entirely invented. Films loosely inspired by true events do not need to reproduce history perfectly; extreme inaccuracies can even become absurd, but strict fidelity is not the issue here. The problem is that a film making social and political commentary should ground its central argument in something that actually happened. Inventing a shocking twist simply to create a “did I just blow your mind?” thought experiment feels like empty provocation within an otherwise realistic drama. It also makes the film’s broader claims harder to trust.

Even so, “Fjord” deserves to be defended against viewers who have dismissed it—often without seeing it—as a “MAGA movie.” The ending makes that reading impossible to sustain. Mihai and Lisbet may not be guilty of the most serious accusations against them, but the final moments acknowledge that their worldview is still damaging their children in other ways. I felt especially sorry for Noora, the character I had sympathized with most throughout the film and whose pain and tragedy shape the closing scene. The mixture of anger, uncertainty and sadness that “Fjord” leaves behind is far from pleasurable, but it is also too powerful to simply brush aside.

“Fjord” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Looper screened the film at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. It is now playing in U.S. theaters.