(The 2026 Oscar Awards will we held on Sunday, March 16 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California.)
Sentimental Value shows how family ties live on through shared memory, albeit painful, and the objects we keep to hold them.
When we want to understand someone, we instinctively ask about their upbringing and family background—where they come from, who raised them, whether they’re close to their parents or not. Yet for some of us, these are not questions we can easily answer, much less share with others.
Childhood experiences don’t just “make” us; they can also “break” us in ways that never quite heal, leaving invisible scars that linger longer than we expect.
Sentimental Value (2025), directed by Joachim Trier, tells the story of two sisters, Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), who are forced to confront their fractured relationship when their estranged father, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), suddenly reenters their lives after years of absence. Gustav, a once-prominent filmmaker, initially offers Nora a role in his long-awaited project, but later casts a young Hollywood actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) instead, stirring up old wounds and unresolved tensions between them.
As seen in one of his most famous works, The Worst Person in the World (2021), Trier has a way of handling flawed characters and capturing the personal struggles of individuals. In Sentimental Value, it focuses on the deep, often fraught connections within immediate families, and how intimately our personal struggles are tied to them. This emotional depth has been met with wide critical acclaim: The film won the Grand Prix at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, earned nine Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress, and swept major categories at the 2026 European Film Awards.
In the Philippines, Sentimental Value was part of the Film Development Council of the Philippines’ FDCP Presents: A Curation of World Cinema, which screened the film in select cinemas from January 28 to February 3, 2026, including Power Plant Cinema, Cinema ’76 Film Society, Gateway Cineplex 18, Robinsons Galleria, and Shangri‑La Red Carpet Cinemas.
In a time when conversations around family trauma are becoming more open, Sentimental Value hits close to home. It explores how family is shaped by sacrifice, unspoken expectations, and shared histories that often ask us to carry burdens quietly. The film ultimately reminds us of a difficult yet liberating truth: learning how to stay in the same room with the past, holding both its pain and its love.
In Sentimental Value, Nora and Agnes carry the weight of a long-standing gap with their father, Gustav, who left after conflicts with their mother and a decision to focus on his career. Their childhood pain was never addressed, leaving emotions bottled up for years.
It ultimately reminds us of a difficult yet liberating truth: learning how to stay in the same room with the past, holding both its pain and its love
After their mother’s death, Gustav returns, but he and his daughters meet in cold distance. Nora and Gustav both recognize the distance between them and accept their inability to communicate. She later puts this into words in a quiet moment with Rachel Kemp; as Rachel tries to understand the father-daughter relationship, Nora admits, “My father is a very difficult person. We can’t really talk.”
At the same time, Gustav struggles to reach out to Nora, feeling that she already expects the worst from him. His absence at her theater performances, including her most recent premiere—an event Agnes invited him to—deepens this gap. Gustav insists that Nora doesn’t want him there, but whether this is due to his stubbornness, guilt, or a mix of both, it only pushes them further apart.
This cycle of avoidance shows how hard it is to repair relationships once unspoken hurt settles in. Gustav, however, seems more open with Rachel, who even dyes her hair to match Nora’s, stepping into her role symbolically. This is evident when he tells her directly, “You’re a good person,” and offers comfort during a vulnerable moment. Their connection is easier because, unlike with Nora, there’s no shared complicated past between them. Yet it’s this very absence of history that makes Rachel aware she is unsuited for the role, prompting her to make a selfless choice in response.
The film highlights a painful truth: We often hurt those closest to us the most. Feeling like we’re failing them, we sometimes direct our care toward others with fewer expectations. Closeness, paradoxically, can create distance.
Though Agnes carries her own resentment toward their father, she also makes a conscious effort to understand him. Agnes is a historian by profession, and she goes to the National Archives of Norway to read records about their grandmother, Karin Borg, who was involved in the Norwegian resistance and endured torture during World War II. These historical documents help Agnes piece together her father Gustav’s past and their family’s emotional fractures.
The film offers a brief glimpse into Gustav’s childhood, which is brilliantly followed by a scene where Agnes hugs her father, a gesture that suggests an emotional opening words alone haven’t managed to create.
Agnes truly embodies the essence of “caring back” to family. At the start of the film, she is shown tending to everyone around her: managing the household, supporting her sister Nora, and caring for her young son. But in a brief but powerful conversation between the sisters, Agnes reminds her sister that she was able to survive their difficult childhood because of her. Even when their mother was struggling, Nora took care of her—washing her hair, getting her to school, making her feel safe.
Moreover, Sentimental Value shows us that communication isn’t always about words. For Nora and Gustav, who have avoided truly honest conversations for years, art becomes their way of connecting. Nora is an actress, and Gustav is a filmmaker. The film Gustav is working on, and its deeply personal script, become a language they both share—a way, however awkward, to try to understand each other. Though Gustav may not openly admit it, the script holds a sentimental value, revealing his most honest attempt to express that he “sees” Nora. As Agnes reads the script and explores its emotional depth, she helps Nora see this truth.
Beyond Gustav’s film script, the idea of a sentimental value resides in a recurring and quietly powerful element: the family house. The film opens by situating us within this space, framing the home as a silent witness to both the family’s joys and fractures. Through brief look-backs, Trier establishes the house as something inherited rather than acquired, passed down across generations and shaped by the lives that have moved through it.
After his ex-wife’s death, the question of whether to sell the house becomes less about property and more about what it means to let go. Gustav ultimately chooses not to sell but to renovate it himself, turning the house into both a living space and the physical foundation of his film project. In doing so, the house becomes a vessel for memory. These invisible ties we have with others are made tangible through objects, allowing connection to persist even when words fail and relationships are tested.
Due to popular demand, FDCP extended its limited run of Sentimental Value on February 4. The film joined a curated lineup that included It Was Just An Accident, Resureccion, and Sound of Falling.
