{"id":689076,"date":"2025-09-09T20:00:42","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T17:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/director-joachim-trier-interview-on-sentimental-value\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T20:00:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T17:00:42","slug":"director-joachim-trier-interview-on-sentimental-value","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/director-joachim-trier-interview-on-sentimental-value\/","title":{"rendered":"Director Joachim Trier Interview on \u2018Sentimental Value\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tFor his latest film, Joachim\u00a0Trier\u00a0is playing it straight.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his career to date, the Danish-Norwegian director has often pivoted between realism and moments where irony and the surreal puncture the everyday. Think of the dream-like narrative in his debut\u00a0Reprise<\/em>\u00a0(2006) where the lives of two aspiring Oslo writers are told via jump-cut flash-forwards and imagined futures that undercut his characters\u2019 youthful ambitions; of\u00a0Thelma<\/em>\u00a0(2017), a sexual coming-of-age tale where a devout young woman\u2019s suppressed desire manifests as telekinetic powers; or of the transcendent moment of cinematic magic in\u00a0The Worst Person in the World\u00a0<\/em>(2021), when time stops as our heroine Julie (Renate Reinsve) runs through Oslo, past the city\u2019s frozen citizens, in her escape from her ex-lover towards her future one.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are no such moments in\u00a0Sentimental Value<\/em>\u00a0(2025). For the family drama, about a film director father Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard), estranged from his two adult daughters, theater actress Nora (Reinsve) and academic historian Agnes (newcomer Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas),\u00a0Trier\u00a0drops the irony.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI grew up in the \u201990s. I come from irony,\u201d explains\u00a0Trier, \u201cbut with this one, I needed to talk about intimate, more tender things. That matters to me now, and I don\u2019t want to be ashamed of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut telling a story straight doesn\u2019t mean making it simple. Sentimental Value<\/em> piles on layers of memory, cinema and cinema-as-memory to explore the reconciliatory power of art \u2014 and its real-world limits.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Nora and Agnes\u2019 mother dies, father Gustav returns. He\u2019s written a new film, directly inspired by his own mother\u2019s tragic story, that he thinks could be his great comeback. He wants daughter Nora to star in it. When she refuses, he casts American star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) and tries to get Kemp to mimic Nora in her performance. All this plays out against the Borg\u2019s family home in Oslo, an old-world cottage that looks sprung from a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, but holding generations of memories and trauma, embedded in its walls.<\/p>\n

\n\tSentimental Value\u00a0<\/em>premiered in Cannes, winning the festival\u2019s runner-up Grand Prize, and is screening at the Toronto International Film Festival as it launches its award-season run. (Norway has picked it as its contender in the best international feature category).<\/p>\n

\n\tTrier\u00a0spoke to\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>\u00a0about childhood memories and generational trauma, about the healing power of art and how becoming a father changed the stories he wants to tell.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe family home plays a central role in this film. What\u2019s your strongest memory from your childhood home?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know if I remember one memory above all the others, but what I can say is the repetition of a spatial experience. If I think about the area where I enter the front door, I can leaf through it like layers of time: The winter coming home sad, the summer coming home happ<\/a>y, slamming the door during an argument, taking off my shoes and sitting on the floor tired from something. All of life happened in that same space.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat becomes the framework of life and memory, and cinema can play with that. So I was thinking about spaces like that in this film. Not so much my family\u2019s house, because we moved a lot. It was my grandparents\u2019 house that was the continuous one, and that was being sold when [co-screenwriter Eskil] Vogt and I wrote this.<\/p>\n

\n\tWas that the initial trigger for the story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tNot the story, but the context for it. I realized all of the 20th century had happened in that house. That house became a discussion between Eskil and I.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo start in a slightly different place, I\u2019d say I\u2019ve had two kids since the last movie, and I\u2019ve asked myself questions about what I transfer to them and what was transferred to me. Realizing, for example, the trauma of my grandfather during the war \u2014 he was a resistance fighter, he barely survived, and then he became a film director \u2014 he wasn\u2019t like Gustav Borg but the idea of that history affected my family. War has affected my family in many specific and unspecific ways. Does it take three generations to get rid of that?<\/p>\n

\n\tThen, when I look at my kids, I think: Will they be as affected by the 20th century as I was? And the house witnessed all that. The house is the witness. Does that make sense? It\u2019s hard to talk about it without being a bit philosophical. I don\u2019t mean to pretend that I can get all that into a movie, but I think some of those notions came into it.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tRenate Reinsve (left) and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in Sentimental Value<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Kasper Tuxen\/Mubi<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThis film is incredibly direct, open and honest. It doesn\u2019t have any irony or cinematic tricks like we saw you use in\u00a0The Worst Person in the World<\/em>, with the time-stopping scene or the psychedelic trip<\/a> sequence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI tried to be clear. I dared to be clear. We shot on 35mm, and the colors \u2014 if you use that as a metaphor \u2014 are more saturated, clear and well-balanced. It\u2019s risky to balance colors on this level; it\u2019s hard. That\u2019s a metaphor for the emotions we wanted.<\/p>\n

\n\tI knew I had great actors; I\u2019m very privileged. The challenge of the film for me was how do we let that clarity and honesty come through when the film talks about the opposite: Our avoidance, our family\u2019s inability to speak, the roles we give each other unconsciously. So much of the movie is about things that are unclear. So how does one tell that story in a straightforward way?<\/p>\n

\n\tI grew up in the \u201990s. I come from irony. And I like elegance. I want my films to be cool and fancy and fun, and I try not to lose that. But with this one, I needed to talk about intimate, more tender things. That matters to me now, and I don\u2019t want to be ashamed of it. Cinema can do that. But it\u2019s a balancing act \u2014 finding a space of absence for interpretation, so it doesn\u2019t become too direct.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTenderness is the new pun.\u201d That\u2019s my new statement. People can laugh, call it a dad joke, but I\u2019m like, \u201cFuck it.\u201d I saw Peter Jackson\u2019s [Beatles documentary]\u00a0Get Back<\/em>\u00a0while we were writing this. It\u2019s just these humans trying to talk about splitting up a band and making songs about it. Playing, but not talking about it. It\u2019s beautiful. \u201cLong and Winding Road\u201d \u2014 Paul sitting with his best friends, feeling he\u2019s slipping away from them and creating art around that. People express themselves directly in art and indirectly social<\/a>ly. So what if the father in this story was that kind of director: Lucid and clear in his art, but an avoiding asshole in real life? I found that interesting.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of your stylistic approach, were there any cinema touchstones you were looking at? The film is, in the best way, not old-fashioned, but it seems to be of a slightly different era.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s many different things. We have some montage sequences that are more playful. We have some experimentation with triple exposure in a moment in the film, during the sermon. But I also had to try to be a better director. I mimed [Skarsgard\u2019s character] Gustav Borg, who\u2019s an old-school, one-wonder [i.e. extremely complex] shot, non-sequitur kind of director. We did this whole one-wonder shot from his [fictional] film\u00a0Anna<\/em>, that I had to direct \u2014 with a child crying in a field that leads into a train that she has to run on. Which was really fun.<\/p>\n

\n\tI shoot on 35 mm. I still use dolly tracks a lot, but I also use handheld. I mix it all up. That\u2019s what to me is modern: To find intimacy and mise-en-sc\u00e8ne that\u2019s appropriate to a human scale, somehow. Describing it now, it sounds like [Robert] Bresson or [Yasujir\u014d] Ozu, whom I adore. But I think I\u2019m a bit more messy than that. I\u2019m moving around a bit more.<\/p>\n

\n\tObviously, people are going to say [Ingmar] Bergman because you\u2019re Scandinavian and because of the family theme. Though watching it, a lot of it felt more like American \u201970s movies<\/a> in some ways.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThank you. Yes, American cinema was a big influence. Completely. Woody Allen films of the \u201970s. Paul Mazursky, that humanism. A lot of different things. Peter Bogdanovich. I could keep going. American \u201970s cinema was such an important milestone in cinematic history.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd musically? Music is always a huge part of your films. Did you have the soundtrack in your head while writing this film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI wasn\u2019t sure it was going to work, but I wanted to have a soul folk sound. [American jazz guitarist] Terry Callier, who worked a lot with the producer Charles Stepney, who also did Minnie Riperton\u2019s music\u2014that kind of early-era American, very sophisticated orchestration. Very soulful, very emotional music. Also, Labi Siffre from the U.K., and a lot more soul and gospel things.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen I\u2019m mixing it up with some modern stuff \u2014 some New Order for the father, and some Roxy Music, because that was kind of his world. Music matters tremendously when we make films. I tell my friends, you can never hear Roxy Music on these great loudspeakers, like in cinemas behind the screen. That volume and that complexity of sound, even the best stereo, it\u2019s really hard to get what you can actually do when you play a song in a film. The sound of that is remarkable.<\/p>\n

\n\tInga Ibsdotter Lilleaas [who plays Anges] was, for me, the revelation of this film. Why did you think of her for this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI wrote this for Renate and for Stellan. But then we had to find someone who could match Renate as her little sister. That\u2019s not easy. I had casting sessions for six months. I met many, many people. It was the same way I met Anders [Danielsen Lie] and Renate, people that aren\u2019t necessarily the most famous, but really turn out to be maybe the best.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tStellan Skarsgard and Elle Fanning in Sentimental Value<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Neon<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe film seems to be saying something about the potential of art to do what might not be possible in personal relationships. Do you believe in the ability of art to reveal truths that are difficult to manage?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, I do. This is one of my first interviews on this, so bear with me, I\u2019m still formulating this. But I\u2019ve thought a lot about this the last few weeks, now that people are starting to see the film. We know there\u2019s a lot of transference of unspokenness in a family. We know that. You can transfer grief or woundedness between parent and child without it ever being spoken. You can take on a burden of grief from a parent without knowing it \u2014 and carry it. I think people feel that\u2019s true. I look at my own children and, as a parent, I think: What will I transfer to them that I\u2019m unconscious of? Any responsible parent will ask that question. We\u2019ve all done so.<\/p>\n

\n\tI also see how children \u2014 before they can even have a verbal language \u2014 dance and sing. We can\u2019t always defend art as something logical or as something that has a clear function. It\u2019s just something we do. It\u2019s inherently human. It\u2019s our yearning to cope and express ourselves, to try to be seen.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt can give some people self-worth. It can give some people fame. It can give others a dearly needed outlet for something they\u2019re unable to socially convey. Art can be many things. And for most people, it gets hidden away. But in the same way that mirroring effects in a family can harm a child, art can be a solution.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I was working on the character of Gustav, I thought: This is a story of reconciliation. That\u2019s when I realized: He was also a wounded child. But he could convey something in art.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd to be honest with you, when I sing a lullaby to my kids to help them sleep, that matters. That\u2019s also art. Art is such a big word, but we are transferring all this stuff, also in a beautiful way, through art. It\u2019s kind of the yin and the yang. All the shit we want to avoid transferring \u2014it\u2019s also a coping mechanism.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe see that with Renate\u2019s character and Stellan\u2019s character. They\u2019re isolating themselves more and more. But they need something, somewhere to put themselves. And they can do that in the space of creativity.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd honestly, because art is often tied in with commerce, commodification and fame, saying this can sound privileged, but art can be very necessary for people. It\u2019s actually a fundamental thing. It\u2019s not just a luxury. In our society, everything\u2019s fucking polarized. Everyone\u2019s got a polemical opinion. I\u2019m trying to say: Let\u2019s listen. Let\u2019s look. Let\u2019s connect.<\/p>\n

\n\tI think in cinema, at its best, there\u2019s the possibility of seeing the other, or having some sense of contact. That\u2019s what we\u2019re playing with in this film. Sometimes it\u2019s the impossibility of connection between characters, but that\u2019s also interesting to work with.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, yeah, I\u2019m sorry, I don\u2019t mean to get on a soapbox about art, but I\u2019m feeling it. I feel that at the moment, it\u2019s something very important. More than ever.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne element in the film that I feel has a connection to Bergman is how he connected to religion. Even though I\u2019m not religious, I understand his sense of religion as a means of being in the world, as a ritual for surviving.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s well put. They talk about \u201cthe atheist prayer,\u201d right? I\u2019m also an atheist. I don\u2019t believe in God. But I respect spirituality, that yearning for some meaning, that keeps going through most of the movies and art I\u2019m interested in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For his latest film, Joachim\u00a0Trier\u00a0is playing it straight. In his career to date, the Danish-Norwegian director has often pivoted between realism and moments where irony and the surreal puncture the everyday. Think of the dream-like narrative in his debut\u00a0Reprise\u00a0(2006) where the lives of two aspiring Oslo writers are told via jump-cut flash-forwards and imagined futures…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":689077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/THR-TIFF2025_SentimentalValue_JoachimTrier_1291-EMBED-2025.jpg?w=1000&h=667&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[155500,32193,26187,124783,158578,25023,156309,135315,158266,38022,158579],"class_list":["post-689076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-cannes-2025","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-elle-fanning","tag-international","tag-joachim-trier","tag-oscars","tag-renate-reinsve","tag-stellan-skarsgard","tag-tiff-2025","tag-toronto-film-festival","tag-toronto-film-festival-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}