Fjord

A film set in a Norwegian town. A family moves. The father is Romanian, the mother Norwegian, and they have three children. They are going back to her home town. It is small, prosperous, and its institutions are strong. The family is Evangelical. They worship, they have their own congregation, and they raise their children by their own understanding. Punishment is part of that understanding. There is a beating when needed. At school a child says something. From there the film becomes an investigation. Social services step in. Interviews begin. The children are heard one by one, the house is visited, a report is written. The agency is firm. The law is plain and corporal punishment is a crime. The family reads it as an attack. To them it is a matter of faith. The narrative gives both sides in full. The people at the agency are not ill-intentioned. Well trained, careful, and genuinely trying to protect children. The family are not monsters either. They love their children and do what they believe is right. What the narrative is interested in is not religion but a limit: its idea is how far one society can accept another's values, and that the question has no answer. Lisbet is between the two. She grew up there; she knows the town's language and her husband's, and belongs fully to neither. Mihai does not step back. The narrative moves toward a court. Its ending takes no easy side, and that is what is most argued over. Cristian Mungiu's known method is here too: long takes, conversation scenes without cuts, and telling without music. This is his first film in English. It screened at Cannes on 18 May 2026 and won the Palme d'Or; it also took the FIPRESCI and Ecumenical Jury prizes. Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve and Lisa Carlehed are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes morally difficult films and the narrative tradition of Romanian cinema. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a clear side; the narrative gives no answer and is built to unsettle both parties.