Sentimental Value

Gustav Borg Stellan Skarsgård is a once-driven film director whose troubled marriage to psychotherapist Sissel ends, and he uses the divorce as a reason to escape Norway and chase his career. Back in the Oslo home that Gustav’s family has owned for generations, Sissel raises their daughters Nora Borg Renate Reinsve and Agnes Borg Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. Nora becomes a fairly successful actress, though she is plagued by crippling stage fright, and she is having an affair with her married colleague Jakob Anders Danielsen Lie. Agnes, a historian and mother to a young son, embodies a quieter resilience, while the family’s undercurrent of memory and strain quietly shapes their lives.

When Sissel dies, Gustav travels back to Norway to reclaim the house that anchors the family history. His daughters resent him for the long absences and his drinking, though Agnes shows more sympathy than Nora. Gustav’s attempts at reconciliation are frequently derailed by his microaggressions and a noticeable lack of emotional depth, even as he forms a tentative bond with Agnes’ young son Erik Øyvind Hesjedal Loven—a connection that mostly comes alive through the lens of cinema. His career, meanwhile, is faltering; he struggles to secure financing for new work, and his latest script draws heavily on memories of his mother Karin, a member of the Norwegian resistance who was tortured during the Nazi occupation and who killed herself in the family home when Gustav was seven.

Gustav proposes shooting parts of the film in the actual house and recreating Karin’s suicide as the climactic moment, asking Nora to embody the character inspired by her grandmother. Nora refuses to read the script, stoking tension and highlighting the widening rift between father and daughter. To salvage the project, Gustav hires American actress Rachel Kemp Elle Fanning, a move that attracts Netflix financing but also intensifies the friction: Rachel cannot speak Norwegian, and Gustav must translate, which makes Nora more suspicious of the attention Gustav lavishes on Rachel instead of his own daughters. The dynamic sharpens when Jakob divorces his wife but rebuffs deeper commitment to Nora, and Gustav’s suggestion that Nora’s inner rage blocks love only fuels her growing disengagement from both work and family life.

Agnes, increasingly aware of the unhealed wounds between her father and sister, confronts Gustav after he casts her son in the film without her consent. This moment echoes a larger realization: Karin’s history and Gustav’s regrets reveal themselves not only in the script but in the emotional arc shared by father and daughters. Agnes, who reads her grandmother’s statement in the National Archives to better understand the generational trauma, discovers that the film’s plot, while inspired by Karin, mirrors Gustav’s true longing to repair his broken relationship with Nora. The revelation softens Nora’s stance, and she agrees to join the film, moved by the way memory and remorse intersect in their story.

With funding secured independently of Rachel, production ultimately shifts to a modern setting on a sound stage. Nora performs the climactic scene alongside Erik as her son, a powerful moment of connection that culminates in a quiet, mutual understanding between father and daughter. After the final take, the film leaves them with a shared, unspoken acknowledgment of what has happened, and what might still be repaired, marking a subtle, hopeful turn in a family shaped by memory, failure, and the redemptive possibility of art.

Last Updated: January 06, 2026 at 10:49