Stage actress Nora (Renate Reinsve) and her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) are reunited with their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a once-renowned film director, who reappears after their mother’s death. Gustav offers Nora the lead role in his new film about his own mother’s suicide, but when she declines, he casts American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning). Joachim Trier, working again with Renate Reinsve, star of his 2022 hit, The Worst Person in the World, uses Gustav’s autobiographical project as a means to unpack the family’s messy history, exposing layers of generational trauma and simmering resentment. Stellan is especially memorable as a director who realises that this could be his final chance to make the film he has previously gestured towards, and to heal the rift with his daughter.

Notes by David O’Mahony