With the Oscars coming up in March, I want to talk about one of my favorite releases of 2025, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which received 9 nominations, including a Best Picture nod. Following the international success of his 2021 release The Worst Person in the World, Trier might have attempted to ride the wave of Hollywood recognition and make a film more applicable to American audiences. Instead, Sentimental Value is even more introspective, philosophical, and stylistically marked than The Worst Person in the World. Trier's voice shines through in both the Scandinavian aesthetic and the film’s nuanced exploration of family, generational trauma, and artistry, giving Sentimental Value a clear and authentic sense of identity.
The film follows Nora (Renate Reinsve) and her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) as they reunite with their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgaard), at their mother’s funeral. Nora is single, a theater actress who has been struggling with stage fright and panic attacks. Agnes works as a historian and is married with a child. Gustav, a semi-retired filmmaker, reveals to his daughters that he plans to stay in Oslo to shoot his new film in their childhood home. He wants Nora to play the lead, but she refuses to entertain the idea, still consumed by years of resentment. He connects with a young American actress named Rachel (Elle Fanning) to play the part, but she worries she isn’t right for the role.
As a slow, character-driven film, Sentimental Value relies heavily on its visuals and performances. The cinematography is unsurprisingly gorgeous, shot on 35mm by Kasper Tuxen, who also worked with Trier on The Worst Person in the World. The film is rich in texture and hazy lighting, set against carefully composed interiors and Nordic landscapes. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas gives my favorite performance in the film as Agnes, and Reinsve and Skarsgaard are excellent as well. What ultimately elevates Sentimental Value from good to great, however, is its authentic character explorations, brought to life through Trier’s thoughtful and distinctive writing.
For a film centered around the relationship between a father and his daughters, they don’t share a lot of dialogue. Gustav struggles to communicate with Nora and Agnes, and they are cautious about letting him into their lives. Nora, in particular, rarely speaks with her father. When they do, it’s a frustrating exchange of misfires. Agnes and Gustav remain cordial, if a bit awkward. Without frequent blowout arguments or long monologues, Sentimental Value allows the audience to notice how much is left unsaid and to feel the heaviness of a daughter’s resentment in the gap between her and her father.
Gustav’s film invites a metatextual conversation about the challenge of creating authentic art within Hollywood’s constraints, a tension directly relevant to Trier and the production of Sentimental Value. Gustav cannot fully realize the story he wants to tell while trying to appeal to an American audience, adapting his script for an American production company, and translating it into English. In Sentimental Value, Rachel’s scenes contain the only English dialogue in the entire film, noticeably distinguishing them from the scenes between the family and highlighting the disconnection from the personal story he is trying to tell. Sentimental Value, like Gustav’s film, would lose its identity if it traded its “Scandinavian-ness” for something more conventionally Hollywood.
With so many films designed for mass appeal, it is hard to discover one like Sentimental Value, which remains so true to itself. There are few moments of catharsis in Sentimental Value; it is a rare case of a film that trusts itself enough to be honest instead of satisfying. Nora, Agnes, and Gustav’s futures remain open-ended. Familial relationships are complex, often burdened with years, or even generations, of trauma and resentment. Grief may never fully heal, certainly not by the end of this film. Sentimental Value does not impose unrealistic growth on its characters but instead makes room to explore their nuances. Trier clearly knew what he wanted this film to be, and that clear identity is what makes Sentimental Value work.