Sentimental Value (15)

(Subtitled)

Nora (Renate Reinsve) is a celebrated actress undone by panic attacks she’s inherited from her estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård). When he turns up late at her mother’s funeral, Nora and her sister Agnes brace for whatever comes next. His plan? To shoot his new film in their childhood home, casting Nora in a role he wrote specifically for her. When she refuses, he turns instead to an American star (Dakota Fanning), while unresolved wounds push their already fragile family into deeper turmoil.

Trier interweaves past and present gracefully, letting scenes slip between memory, imagination and cinema. Reinsve gives Nora a vivid inner world, her guardedness revealing the emotional cost of carrying her family’s history, while Skarsgård’s performance captures a man desperate to repair what he’s broken.

As long-buried secrets surface, the film becomes a moving reflection on inheritance and how pain echoes across generations. With beautifully observed characters and a film-within-a-film framework, it becomes a layered study of connection, regret, and the stories families tell to survive one another.