Fjord Details a Family’s Sudden Nightmare in Norway
Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu makes thoughtful movies about social issues that cross international borders: In 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a young Romanian woman risks her life for an illegal abortion. R.M.N. explores xeno-phobia in a small Transylvanian village, dissecting the complexity of spontaneous human impulses in the process. Mungiu’s films can spur us to think anew about issues we’d rather keep in the background, and they can at times be deeply moving. They can also feel dreary and instructive, in an eat-your-vegetables way.
Mungiu’s Fjord, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier in the year, offers a healthy dose of very nutritious vegetables, and in places the story almost—almost—stretches the bounds of believability. But its actors, including Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, as well as two young newcomers, make you believe in one family’s sudden nightmare. Do the authorities entrusted to protect our children always know what’s best for them? Fjord suggests, provocatively, that the answer may not always be yes.
Mihai Gheorghiu (Stan), who is Romanian, and his Norwegian wife Lisbet (Reinsve) have just relocated with their five children from Romania to Norway, to be closer to Lisbet’s parents. Mihai and Lisbet are also deeply religious, and appear to be raising their children in a sometimes strict but undeniably loving home. One day, at the children’s new school, an instructor charged with protecting the students’ welfare notices a bruise on the shoulder of the eldest Gheorghiu daughter, Elia (Vanessa Ceban). The administrator takes swift action, and before Mihai and Lisbet can fully grasp what’s happening, their children—including their infant, who’s still breastfeeding—are whisked into foster homes. Their struggle to reunite their family involves risky twists and a great deal of frustrating bureaucracy.
Unless you know Norway’s judicial system, you might be tempted to wonder: Could one family really be broken up that fast, with so little evidence? Mungiu’s premise seems somewhat far-fetched, intensified for dramatic reasons, though it’s worth noting that his script is based on a real-life case in Norway. And recently, in the U.S., Child Protective Services interviewed the children of former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, separating the children from their fathers for 24 hours, after receiving a tip alleging that they were at risk. The report was proved false, but the incident shows how easily a system designed to protect kids might be manipulated.
Regardless, the plausibility of Fjord’s premise is academic in the context of the performances given by Stan and Reinsve. Reinsve (so terrific in 2025’s Sentimental Value) is resolutely unglamorous here, a dutiful wife and mother decked out in dowdy clothes. But her distress over the loss of her children crosses the planes of her face like a muted shadow; you sense some anger beneath that meek veneer. And Stan, who is Romanian American, gives layers of complexity to Mihai as a father figure. He clearly loves his kids, but he also has a temper. Stan doesn’t make Mihai easy to read, just as the movie around him doesn’t offer any easy conclusions.
Yet amid all the child-custody drama Fjord lays before us, a subplot involving the deepening friendship between Elia and a neighbor couple’s daughter, Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), ends up being the film’s most powerful and moving element. These two young teenagers aren’t just navigating a new friendship; they’re exploring feelings that may or may not be the roots of romantic love. Sometimes kids tell us what we need to know about life, even if it’s not always the lesson we expect or want. And sometimes they steal a movie away from the grownups. Fjord, perhaps unbeknownst even to the man who made it, really belongs to them.
