In a world saturated with digital spectacle, the quest for genuine human connection onscreen has never been more vital. Enter Joachim Trier, the masterful Norwegian director whose character-driven narratives, including the Oscar-nominated The Worst Person in the World, strike with surgical precision at the heart of modern angst. In his latest film, Sentimental Value, his muses are two of the most compelling voices in contemporary acting: Renate Reinsve, celebrated for her deeply felt, nuanced performances, and Elle Fanning, an acting veteran whose career spans virtually her entire life.
The world of cinema often searches for truth in the most intimate places, and few directors capture that raw, vulnerable honesty better than Trier.
The film won the Grand Prix, the second-highest prize, at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and follows sisters Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes as they confront their aging, egomaniacal director father (Stellan Skarsgård), when he returns to make an autobiographical film in their childhood home, casting a famous American actress (Fanning) instead of his daughter.
Trier wanted to explore an emotional, intimate drama with good actors, and that’s exactly what he delivers. He believes that American movies in the ’70s and ’80s did just that. “Relationships and siblings and parents and all that stuff, I find this endlessly interesting because it’s something everyone has to go through on some level.”
Fanning related to this universal theme of family and connection. “Everybody has a family, whether it’s a complicated relationship or a close relationship. I think it’s universally relatable. I guess the added layer on this film is it is also dealing with filmmaking […] making art and just being a creative person, and balancing your creative life with your family life. And the sacrifices that you have to give up, but then also not wanting to give that creative part of you up, because that’s what you feel like makes you lovable or special, so all those dynamics in play just endlessly fascinated me.”
For the 27-year-old, her filmography is more than a résumé; it’s a deeply personal, cherished memoir. She views her extensive body of work as an intimate record of her own growth. “All the roles actually, they’re almost like a baby book of something that I look back [on]…I see myself going through puberty. I’m like, ‘oh, I remember, I had that crush on that boy when I did that film,’ or it’s like, these life moments that are woven through the stages of my films. So it holds a lot of weight for me, the movies that I choose and the characters, and they stay with you,” she said during a press interview in Toronto.
Trier interjects, telling Fanning, “It sounds corny to say, you’re like an old soul, but you’re still a young person. You have experience like an actor in their 40s or something.”
For Reinsve, the ultimate goal in acting is achieving absolute authenticity—it’s a state she reaches through an intense trust established with Trier. Her process marries disciplined analysis with spontaneous vulnerability.
“I think what really defines me now as an actor is that I come from the theater, where you work a lot in analysis and you really build a character. And then meeting Joachim, that challenged something else in me, and that was finding authenticity and some truth in what is there in the moment. And those are two very different things, and those two combined are now very defining of me. So, I still work with analysis and I kind of write a script for her thoughts, in contrast to what she is saying,” she explained.
However, the real magic happens when she lets go. Reinsve credits Trier’s direction for creating a setting where this is possible. “I love being in wordless scenes where those little moments can occur with another actor. Joachim really has a way of working, from when we do rehearsals to when we’re on set, he really makes that climate, or he grows that climate of trust and openness in us, so that we are allowed to lose control. And things that we don’t have control of and subconscious things in ourselves actually occur, so we can be surprised ourselves.”
This environment of trust is crucial, especially when tackling emotionally heavy characters. “It was more important that we had that trust […] going into a character with more emotional weight,” she noted, underlining that this dynamic elevates the performance beyond mere interpretation.
For Fanning, being on set is where she feels most herself. “You’re like, chasing the electricity, the spontaneous moments that you literally can’t recreate, but then they’re on film.”
Trier provides the philosophical framework for his actors’ pursuit of authenticity. He argues for the significance of character-driven films that tackle universal issues, especially now. “It’s a character drama, but there’s something about trying to find conflict and drama in the small things of life,” Trier asserts. He champions cinema’s empathetic power, which is the sentimental connection he hopes to forge with audiences. “Cinema can be an empathetic art form where you see the other person and feel some connectedness. I feel that I long for that at the moment, this sense of connection.”
It’s exactly what Sentimental Value does. It is this collaborative pursuit of truth, connection, and emotional history that underscores why, for both Reinsve and Fanning, their craft holds profound and lasting sentimental value.
Feature Image: courtesy of TIFF.
