TIFF Review: Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve in Fjord

Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu collaborates with Romanian-born, American-raised actor Sebastian Stan for the first time in the film Fjord, which interrogates one experience of Romanian men living abroad in the generation following the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, an experience of xenophobia and persecution that isn’t as cut and dry as it sounds.

Mungiu writes and directs, and Stan stars as Mihai Gheorghiu, a Romanian man who moves with his Norwegian wife, Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), to Lisbet’s small Norwegian hometown. They have five children and Lisbet’s parents offer to help, so off to Norway they go.

At first, things seem fine. The kids integrate into new schools, and the oldest children, Emmanuel (Jonathan Ciprian Breazu) and Elia (Vanessa Ceban) make friends with a neighbor girl, Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen). Lisbet begins working as a nurse at an elder care home, and Mihai goes to work for the municipality in IT, even though he’s an aeronautical engineer by education. The family is welcomed into the community, but there is a significant point of friction introduced early—the Gheorghius are Christian, and belong to a particularly conservative denomination. It’s unnamed here, but it’s the kind that forbids dancing. 

Notably, there’s nothing bad about the Gheorghiu family’s behavior. Some might view their beliefs as particularly restrictive, but they are shown to be a close-knit, loving family. Which is why it is then surprising when Barnevernet, the Norwegian child protection service, removes the children from the Gheorghius’ home. It happens after Elia shows up to school with some bruises, and Emmanuel makes a comment about their mother “punishing” her. From there, suspicion launches an investigation, and it quickly becomes clear that what’s happening to the Gheorghius is rooted in deeply conflicting personal and national beliefs, laws, and a question of how far parental authority, versus state authority, extends.

Fjord is a deliberately frustrating film. At every turn, Mungiu avoids easy answers and resolution. Indeed, even the setup of the conflict is debatable, as the question of where Elia’s bruises came from is never fully answered. We are simply shown several equally plausible possibilities, only one of which is a physical intervention from a parent—and even that is complicated, because Emmanuel and Elia were roughhousing near their infant brother and nearly caused him serious injury, and Lisbet was trying to mitigate the moment.

Mungiu crafts his narrative carefully, though Fjord is not edited with the same precision – it’s a sprawling film that changes focus a little too much, shifting between Mihai, Lisbet, Elia, and Mia (Lisa Carlehed), the Gheorghius’ neighbor who acts as their attorney. There’s a lack of sharpness of perspective that undercuts the film; Mungiu builds up sympathy for all sides – no one is entirely right, and no one is entirely wrong, but for all he invests in his narrative polygon, the lack of perspective makes it hard to invest emotionally in the story. It might be that Mungiu did not want to sensationalize the story, but the end result is that Fjord is as cold and remote as Lisbet’s home. And while Stan and Reinsve give fine performances, they get lost in that perspective shuffle.

Where Fjord really shines is in the court case scenes. The closest thing the film has to a villain is a rather odious prosecutor (Christian Rubeck) who clearly looks down on the Gheorghiu family for being religious, and on Mihai, particularly, for being Romanian. In court, the prosecutor barely conceals his xenophobia, heavily implying that Mihai, as a Romanian, is less evolved than Norwegians. Not just less progressive, which is a political state, but actually less human, not as capable of rearing his own children as the Norwegian state would be.

The inherent tension between parents saying, “we know best for our children” and a government saying, “We know best for your children” is highlighted perfectly in the court scenes. And while the film shows a value judgment being made on choosing to raise children within a religious framework, it only scratches the surface of a development involving Mihai engaging hardline conservative/religious activists to bolster his cause. Indeed, the idea that this prosecution is actually making Mihai more conservative is barely touched upon, though it seems an obvious conclusion.

What Mungiu does better is pose a series of questions to the audience and offer no simple solutions. Fjord is at its best when making the audience sit with contradictions, inconsistencies, and simply unknowable things, like what really happened to cause Elia’s bruises. It is also lowkey funny, in a way that suggests there’s an alternate version of Fjord which is a satire, that at no point does anyone ever just ask the children. They’re interviewed once in their second language, and then no one ever goes back for clarification. When Noora says she knows where Elia got her bruises, she is sent to her room. The Barnevernet is so concerned about the Gheorghiu children’s welfare, except they won’t consider the Gheorghiu children’s wishes.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about Fjord is how far removed the children are from the process determining their fate. The closest thing Fjord has to a hero is Noora, who proposes just leaving and living without adults. Honestly, nothing about Fjord suggests the adults are killing it when it comes to doing what’s best for the kids. Everyone’s too busy entrenching their opinions and trying to score points against whichever system they view as the most ridiculous. There is no part of Fjord that won’t make you want to tear your hair out a little, I just wish the film’s emotional core was as well developed as its argumentative base. Fjord will leave you with a lot of questions, but ultimately, its discomfort is easier to shake off than it should be.

Fjord will play exclusively in theaters from October 9, 2026.