Review: 'Fjord' is a harrowing drama about a Christian family at odds with Norwegian law, with great performances but mixed messages

I can’t think of a movie that was so good and yet aggravated me as much as “Fjord,” Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu’s Palme D’Or-winning drama that pits two opposite forces — liberal Norwegians and conservative Christians — and gives the audience reasons to dislike both of them.

The family details we get early here is that Mihai and Lisbet Gheorghiu — played by Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve — have moved from his home country of Romania to her birthplace, a small town in Norway. (As it happens, those are the birth countries of the two actors.)

Mihai and Lisbet have five children, including a year-old baby, and have raised them in an evangelical Christian faith. Even so, Mihai and Lisbet befriend their next-door neighbor, Mats Halberg (Markus Scarth Tønseth), the liberal headmaster at the town’s school, and his wife, Mia (Lisa Carlehed). The Gheorghius’ oldest daughter, Elia (Vanessa Ceban), quickly becomes close with the Halbergs’ rebellious daughter, Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen).

When a gym teacher notices bruises on Elia’s back and neck, it sets in motion what becomes a nightmare scenario for Mihai and Lisbet. Several teachers call in Child Protective Services, who act quickly to remove the children — even the baby, who Lisbet is still breastfeeding — from the Gheorghius’ house and to live with foster parents.

Mihai is convinced the CPS caseworker, Gunda (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), and her liaison at the school, Frida (Lisa Loven Kongsli), are prejudiced against hardcore Christians. Though even their church’s Norwegian members warn Mihai not to fight the CPS, whose power to trample on families’ civil rights is unquestioned in Norwegian law and society. Even the couple’s first lawyer (Anne E. Kokkinn) quits after one meeting, because she refuses to listen to Mihai’s side of things. 

Their neighbor, Mia, who’s a lawyer, starts to realize that the case isn’t so simple — because of a language barrier with the younger children, and Frida and Gunda’s biases — and offers to help the Gheorghius in civil court to get their children back. By then, Mihai is fed up and finds another way to fight the system.

What keeps us engaged with the Gheorghiu parents are the actors playing them. Stan, best known for his work in the Marvel universe, gives a breathtaking performance as the religiously rigid Mihai, and Reinsve counters heartbreakingly as Lisbet, who’s caught between the people she grew up with and her love for her husband and her children. (Stan and Reinsve have shown great chemistry before, in the 2024 dark comedy “A Different Man.”)

Mungiu’s “plague on both your houses” attitude about the two sides here — the Gheorghius’ strict Christianity and the Norwegians’ equally dogmatic governmental protectiveness — ends up being more infuriating than illuminating. Presenting both sides fairly isn’t the same as showing each as being wrong.

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‘Fjord’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 30, in theaters. Rated R for language, full nudity and self-injury. Running time: 146 minutes; in English and Norwegian and Romanian, with subtitles.