‘Sentimental Value’ Director Joachim Trier Plus Stars Elle Fanning & Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas On His Film’s Eight Golden Globes Nominations

“Certainly, a lot has happened since Cannes,” Norwegian director Joachim Trier told Deadline with a smile. Indeed, this morning his film made history at the Golden Globes by breaking out of the foreign-language category big-time. As well as the expected non-English nomination, Trier’s film garnered Best Film (Drama), Best Director and Best Screenplay (with longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt), plus recognition for the cast: Stellan Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve, Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. “What a joy, man!” he beamed.

Like most of the non-American talent contacted for their reaction to the Golden Globes, Trier was away from home, working the circuit, when he heard the news. “I’m in Paris right now,” he said. “Stellan and I are here to do a special screening of Sentimental Value, with my dear friend Isabelle Huppert, and I’d just arrived at my hotel. Eskil texted me, like, ‘Hey dude, it’s streaming now.’ So I was on the phone with him as we were watching the nominations and there was one after another. I feel we’ve been traveling like a family recently, with the four leads, me and Eskil and even the editor, Olivier [Bugge Couté], has joined us a lot — he was also a part of the team from the beginning. And to see everyone getting kind of embraced like this with these nominations, I’m so happy.”

Trier recalled that he knew his film — the story of a fading European-superstar filmmaker trying to reconnect with his two daughters — had something special even before it premiered in Cannes, where it won the Grand Prix from Juliette Binoche’s jury. “I had a feeling early on,” he said, “because I screen a lot during the editing process, and we discuss the film widely before I lock my edit. So, I knew already that some people had some very strong responses to it, but it was at Cannes that everything happened, and people really embraced it. It was quite quickly released in France [in August], where it did tremendous box office. And now in the US it’s doing tremendously well as well.”

The director was quick to add that he doesn’t take all the recent awards fuss for granted. “It’s important to remember that we are very grateful for the attention and the nominations,” he said, “both from film critics and now the Golden Globes. But I guess the wonderful thing is that there is an attention around the film, one that makes audience members go to the cinema. And as you know, I shoot on 35mm, I’ve always been a theatrical cinema guy. It’s my whole life and it’s a format that I dearly love. And, in a way, the film is also a bit of a love letter to cinema about a film family. So, to be embraced like this by colleagues — even in the US — has been really very special.”

Unusually for any film, let alone an international production, Sentimental Value’s haul of nominations is shared among the cast. “I think that’s maybe what makes me the most proud,” said Trier. “I mean, the way I see being a director is, of course, about the craft of visual storytelling. Of course. But, more than anything, it’s about casting, and encouraging your actors to do their best work. I’m incredibly proud of them, and to see that all four of the leads are now nominated for Golden Globes, and for the Critics’ Choice awards, makes me extremely happy and proud. I wanted to make an ensemble film and I had a great casting department with Yngvill Haga and Avy Kaufman. I’m very proud of the cast. So no, maybe it’s easier to focus on that to not to get too big-headed. It’s wonderful to see my wonderful actors getting the praise that they deserve.”

Elle Fanning earned one of the film’s eight nominations for her supporting role of Rachel Kemp — a rather meta experience for Fanning, since Kemp is an American movie star. Following the nominations announcement, Fanning told Deadline, “The group text is popping off, with lots of champagne bottle emojis and congratulations and things.”

She added, “I’m just so happy for Joachim and Inga and Renata and Stellan, and it was such a special experience getting to make it with them.”

For fellow Globe nominee Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, who plays Agnes, sister to Reinsve’s Nora, meeting Fanning in that context seemed rather surreal, she told Deadline on Monday after the nomination news. “With Elle, I think it was the first scene we did when she arrived in Oslo and to the house for the first time. I thought that was hilarious to do — she takes a selfie with me, and it was such a meta experience because she’s a big Hollywood movie star in real life. So, we were kind of giggling about this. It felt like we were sort of just playing life, just trying to imitate what it was like meeting her for the first time.”

The chance to work with Trier in their native Norway was a long-held dream for Lilleaas. “I’ve admired his work for a long time,” she said. “I remember seeing his movies in the theater and being just struck by how great they were, and that they were Norwegian, and they felt very different from a lot of other Norwegian cinema.”

She also noted that she’d wanted to work with Reinsve as well as Trier. “I never thought that would happen, especially not after The Worst Person in the World and that success they had with that movie,” she said. “I thought they would for sure leave and make movies elsewhere. But luckily, he’s continued to make movies in Norway, and I feel so privileged to have had the chance to work with him. I know there are a lot of great actors in Norway who wanted this role, and so I feel so lucky.”

Lilleaas had known Reinsve a little through youth theater, she said, which helped them to connect as sisters in Sentimental Value. “I think it gives us a little bit of a childlike foundation to build off of in a way,” Lilleaas said. “She’s a very empathetic type of actor. She’s very tuned into the other person. She’s very available, and so it becomes very easy to work with her and to just feel stuff and be very present with her as an actor.”

Lilleaas noted that Trier’s directing style created a space that felt “like how I thought being an actor was supposed to be when I was younger — very collaborative, very intimate emotionally and present, and it’s very rarely like that. You don’t really have the time often, and the sets are very busy, and his sets are so focused and everyone’s in it together, and he creates this atmosphere and this feeling that everyone has ownership of the whole movie, everyone who’s working on it, and that’s really special.”

Asked if the nominations just put more pressure to work with Reinsve — his lucky charm — again, Trier laughed. “Well, we’re good friends,” he said, “and I think — and hope — that we will make more films. I don’t know what I’m doing next, it’s too early to say. But I don’t think it’s a pressure. It’ll be a joy if it happens. I mean we’ve done three films together now, so that kind of proves my point.”