Rationale:

With Sentimental Value director Joachim Trier has utilised an exciting culmination of motifs that he has explored throughout his career: an ambitious yet confined tale exploring family relationships, memories, and the wonders and pitfalls of creativity. Fittingly, he has done so by amplifying his filmmaking as a collective effort, developing and expanding relationships with his creative collaborators, among them his longtime screenwriter companion Eskil Vogt, and adding new ones both in front of and behind the camera.

While many of the excellent actors will be familiar faces, it has been a delight to get to know Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas’s acting; an astonishing performance that helps elevate the film from a straightforward tale about a difficult father into something more complex and nuanced about sisterhood and negotiating the care of others alongside one’s own self-care.

Trier’s collaborations suggest a way of making Nordic cinema without losing the specificity and verisimilitude of his story being a Norwegian one: by credibly incorporating other nationalities into the fabric of film’s universe and by calling on key collaborators such as cinematographer Kasper Tuxen Andersen and editor Olivier Bugge Coutté. Together, they have found a cinematic way to tell a story that feels both intimate and personal, but also grand and universal.