Fjord (2026) Review: Layered and Beautifully Crafted!
There is no rule book for being a parent. Although there are general social norms and physical tasks every parent must abide by to care for their children, everywhere one looks there are different opinions on how children should be raised and treated by their parents. It starts with providing basic needs for your child and later discovering how they will be brought up. Religion often plays a part in the methods parents use to teach their children about the world and shape their values, beliefs, and behaviors.
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In Fjord, Mihai Gheorghiu (Sebastian Stan) and Lisbet Gheorghiu (Renate Reinsve) are evangelical Christians instilling in their children the importance of prayer and traditional family values. As a result, their methods of caring and disciplining their children align with how Mihai was raised in a Romanian Christian household. The Gheorghiu parents have a good idea as to where and how their family operates in the world. That is until they move closer to Lisbet’s parents in Norway amongst a more progressive group of people.
When their children Elia (Vanessa Ceban) and Emmanuel (Johnathan Ciprian Breazu) are asked about their home life at school, they get tangled into a web of speculation about their parent’s treatment towards them. This brings about a complex legal battle where Mihai and Lisbet’s parenting gets called into question. ‘Fjord’ is a mesmerizing film in which writer-director Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days fame) raises and calls into question our own values and traditions in the face of what is truly right.
Fjord addresses a number of issues that both coincide and goes against our own thoughts and values regarding the upbringing of children. In the film, the small town in Norway that the family moves to is composed of a majority of people with progressive ideologies, making the Gheorghiu in the minority with their more traditional Christian values. Due to the town seeing their practices as “dangerous” to their children, basic human rights are called into question regarding a parent’s right to religion and how they practice it.
In the Western world, we like to believe we are a melting pot of individuals that brings color into a larger world. However, there is still a sense of superiority amongst the Western world in which many would rather see people adapt to their way of life rather than celebrate our differences. In Fjord, it becomes evident that the Gheorghiu are expected to mold into their surroundings rather than exist within it.
Fjord’s script is weaved together in a layered fashion. Cristian Mungiu is able to examine how religion and values reinforce how parents bring up their children while juxtaposing it with the character of Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), a rebellious classmate of Elia and Emmanuel, who possesses a sense of curiosity outside her own family’s unit. This balance allows the film to display how Elia, Emmanuel, and Noora all develop a sense of curiosity for how the other’s lives. Here the audience sees Elia and Emmanuel’s interest in electronics and YouTube and how Noora becomes intrigued by Christianity through her friends.
What appears a smaller aspect of the film speaks volumes to the way people should communicate in a perfect world. Children are curious to learn about what they have not been exposed to, leading them to open up their minds to new points of view. Displaying how all the adults in the film butt heads on the “perfect” way to bring up children followed by the children sharing and learning from each other encapsulates one of the major themes.
Fjord’s direction and setting allow it to reinforce its ideas of the Gheorghiu’s feeling of entrapment amongst their progressive community. The way Norway is shot and portrayed in the film shows the small town nature it exhibits where anyone outside its bubble of thinking or routine is socially ostracized. Amongst the landscape are beautiful shots of winter that feels freeing, a feeling that Noora so intensely holds to examine her own identity and values separate from her parents, and their expectations of her.
Although the film takes place in Norway, the ideas in the film reinforce how wherever one lives, whether that be America or halfway across the world, there will always be a minority living amongst a majority. There will always be a discrepancy between groups, often leading to confrontation. Fjord is a thought-provoking film that brings about a story of what is truly right in an often divided society.
‘Fjord (2026)’ Rating – 4/5
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