The decision arrived late on a quiet weeknight, in that hollow hour when the day’s work is done but the mind refuses to rest. The city outside my window was a soft hum of distant traffic, a low thrum against the silence of my apartment. Inside, I was adrift in the endless, shimmering sea of streaming options, wrestling with a familiar strain of procrastination, a castaway in search of a simple shore. I was looking for something with teeth, something that felt less like content and more like cinema. And so I found Sentimental Value, a film that is not merely a story about a family, but a profound and devastatingly beautiful exploration of how artists use their craft as a final, desperate language when all other forms of communication have failed. It is a masterpiece of quiet observation, anchored by some of the most breathtakingly authentic performances of the year.
There is a unique modern ritual to this kind of search, a feeling of scrolling through digital shelves where a litany of thumbnails blurs into an overwhelming tapestry of choice. It was in that familiar fugue state, navigating the curated libraries of Goojara, that the title caught my eye. The reunion of director Joachim Trier and actress Renate Reinsve, the partnership that gave us the magnificent The Worst Person in the World, was an irresistible promise. It felt like an invitation to something substantial, a story with the potential for both grit and wit. What I discovered was a film that operates like a 19th-century novel, centering its drama not on a high concept but on a place—an old ancestral home that has absorbed generations of joy and grief, and a family that has inherited its fractures.
The film plunges us directly into the turbulent psyche of its protagonist, Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve), a successful stage actress whose career is a constant battle against paralyzing anxiety. Her life is a carefully constructed defense mechanism; even her affair with a married colleague, Jakob (Anders Danielsen Lie), functions as a "safety net" to keep genuine intimacy at a distance. She is a woman who, as she puts it, is "80 percent fucked up," using her art as a safety valve for unmanageable emotions. Her sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), is her opposite—a historian who has built a stable, happy family life.
Their fragile equilibrium is shattered when their estranged father, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), a once-renowned film director with a roving eye and a drinking problem, reappears after their mother’s death. He returns not just with condolences, but with a proposition that is both a plea and an act of profound emotional manipulation. He has written his comeback film, his first in 15 years, and he wants Nora to star in it. The project is a raw, autobiographical excavation of his own childhood trauma: the story of his mother, a member of the Norwegian resistance, who died by suicide in the family home when he was just seven. Nora, still simmering with resentment over a lifetime of abandonment, wants nothing to do with it. Her refusal sets in motion a collision of past and present, truth and fiction, as the family home becomes a stage for a reckoning that is decades overdue.
A film this dedicated to the nuances of human behavior lives or dies on the strength of its cast, and Sentimental Value is a showcase of phenomenal, layered work across the board. The consensus is clear: the acting is the film's furious, beating heart.
Renate Reinsve delivers a masterful performance as Nora, a character she and Trier began developing as a creative "game" while still filming The Worst Person in the World. They imagined an "emotionally heavy version" of her previous character, Julie, and that seed blossomed into Nora—a woman more mature, melancholic, and wrestling with a "deep sense of loneliness." Reinsve imbues Nora with a quiet bravery beneath her insecurities, a performance so rich in subtle humor and sadness that it recalls a young Diane Keaton. She physically embodies the character's core conflict: the very things she carries from her childhood, the things that make her panic and flee the stage, are precisely what give her force as a performer. It is a collaboration built on such profound trust that Reinsve describes it as "wordless," allowing her to excavate the role with a bewitching, minimalist economy.
As the patriarch Gustav, Stellan Skarsgård has never been better. He portrays a man whose obsession with cinema became a substitute for fatherhood; his films were his real children. Skarsgård wears Gustav’s sadness and regret like a cloak, a once-great artist horrified by his own mortality and fumbling to communicate with the daughters he barely knows. His attempts are clumsy, often cruel, as when he suggests Nora's acting lacks truth because she doesn't have a family—an infuriating critique from the man who was never there. It is a heartbreaking portrait of a man who can only express love through the filter of his art.
Yet, many viewers and critics have singled out Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as the film’s true revelation. Her performance as Agnes is the story's radiant, emotional anchor. She is the mediator, the "glue," but beneath her functional exterior lies a repressed sadness that is devastating when it finally breaks through. She is the one who remembers her father’s attention only came when she had a role in his film, a bitter memory that fuels her fierce protection of her own son.
Rounding out the core ensemble is Elle Fanning as Rachel Kemp, the American movie star Gustav casts after Nora’s refusal. It’s a tricky role that could have been a one-dimensional caricature, but Fanning plays it with a wonderful sincerity. She is the catalyst, the outsider whose presence forces the family’s internal drama to the surface. Her struggle to find the truth in a role she is not right for is a nuanced performance of an actress who is good, but miscast—a feat of incredible subtlety.
At its core, Sentimental Value is about two people, a father and a daughter, who can only process their emotions through the medium of art. Gustav is incapable of a direct apology, so he writes a script. The film-within-the-film, ostensibly about his mother, is emotionally an open letter to Nora, a confession of his sincere regrets about their broken relationship. He needs her to perform his apology back to him, to validate his pain through her own. It's this complex, meta-narrative structure that elevates the film beyond a simple family drama, a sophisticated choice that is often lost in the algorithm-driven libraries of platforms like Goojara, making its presence feel all the more vital. It justifies making the father a filmmaker, using the creation of cinema as the "key to unlocking a deeper understanding" of the family's human knot.
Nora, in turn, is so uncomfortable with her own trauma that she can only access it on stage. The story builds to a breathtakingly powerful reconciliation that is achieved not with words, but with a shared artistic act. After a pivotal, cathartic conversation with Agnes, Nora finally reads the script and realizes her father has truly seen her. By agreeing to do the film, she enters into a dialogue with him on the only terms they both understand.
Sentimental Value has resonated deeply with audiences, sparking intense discussion about its emotional beats and thematic choices. Here are some of the most common takeaways:
There is a unique and potent intimacy to watching a story this delicate unfold. The final, cathartic exchange between the sisters feels less like a scene and more like a private confession. Watching it on Gojara, in the quiet solitude of a living room, amplifies its power. The emotional close-up feels intensely personal, a moment where the barrier between screen and viewer dissolves, which is perhaps the ideal way to experience a film built on such quiet, devastating truths.
Sentimental Value is a profoundly mature and deeply moving work from a filmmaker at the peak of his powers. It forgoes shocking twists and water-cooler moments for something far more resonant: the quiet, earned catharsis of a family finding a way to speak after a lifetime of silence. While some may find its pace too deliberate or its ending too neat, the film’s power lies in its commitment to its characters’ messy, contradictory, and deeply human realities. It is essential viewing, a testament to a "wordless" creative partnership that has produced one of the most sophisticated and emotionally resonant films of the year. In the end, it is a sad love story between a father and a daughter, told in the only language they have left: the flickering light of the cinema.
