Most critics come out in favour of Fjord, though few come out in raptures. Thirteen of the eighteen reviews are positive, and the praise settles on two things: Sebastian Stan as the devout Romanian father, a performance several reviewers call his most ambitious and restrained, and Cristian Mungiu’s refusal to take sides in the fight between a strict religious family and Norway’s child protection system. Renate Reinsve is admired alongside him, and the long takes, sharp dialogue and trial scenes are singled out as the film at its most gripping.
The reservations cluster around distance. Several reviews find the film cooler and less affecting than Mungiu’s earlier work, one notes the 146-minute runtime drags under its subplots, and Time Out thinks both sides are overdrawn. The spread is wide. The Guardian finds it underpowered and anticlimactic, Screen Daily calls it bloodless despite the performances, and Sight and Sound feels the antagonists are flattened into villains.
R
Radio Times
19 May 2026 · ★★★★
80
Mungiu delivers a knotty, complex moral tale and first-rate engrossing drama with sharp dialogue, long takes and riveting trial scenes that position it as a Cannes highlight.
Mungiu uses the story of a strict evangelical Romanian-Norwegian family facing child services intervention to explore cultural mistranslation and intolerance toward conservative values in progressive Scandinavia. The film indicts a form of elite liberal bias without offering easy judgments.
The review presents the film as a gripping culture war drama about religious parents accused of child abuse in a tale of cultural assimilation and clashes between progressive and traditional values. Mungiu is noted for crafting a cautionary story that examines these tensions through the family's ordeal.
The critic finds the film a compellingly squirm-inducing drama that scrutinizes Norway’s child protection system and cultural clashes, though it falls short of Mungiu’s best work. Stan's performance as the strict father is particularly praised for its nuance and restraint.
The film explores cultural, religious and progressive frictions in a scenic Norwegian setting with a clear-eyed, unjudgmental approach to issues like court politicisation and religion in parenting. It lacks the emotional impact of Mungiu's earlier work but offers sharper understanding of both sides by the end, with a revelatory performance from Sebastian Stan.
The critic praises the film's ambitious ambiguity and riveting portrayal of cultural clashes and family drama in a Norwegian setting involving child welfare issues, highlighting the strong ensemble acting and intricate narrative that avoids easy resolutions.
The critic highlights Sebastian Stan’s most ambitious performance yet as the devout Romanian father navigating a domestic nightmare with Norwegian authorities. The film is praised for its disorienting reversal of sympathies in exploring bureaucratic overreach and cultural assimilation.
The critic finds the film compelling in its exploration of child welfare and cultural tensions but questions the director's intentions and notes it pushes buttons with art-house realism, viewing it as mixed in its approach to conservative elements.
Mungiu’s chilly moral drama about cultural clash and child protection services is gripping and surges from cosy to traumatic, but hyperbolises both sides and serves as a Rorschach test for viewers.
The critic finds spectacular and unnerving imagery in Mungiu’s morality tale about religious persecution but is let down by unconvincing characterisation that flattens antagonists into villains.
Mungiu's follow-up is an underpowered, anticlimactic misstep that fails to deliver complexity or revelation around its child abuse and cultural clash themes. The director's signature style is present but the story leaves too many issues unresolved in a disappointing manner.
Mungiu crafts a thought-provoking culture-clash drama with visual grandeur and strong performances from Reinsve and Stan, but dilutes potency with screenplay rabbit holes, resulting in a bloodless and underpowered film.
The critic finds Mungiu's film a compelling exploration of prejudice and hypocrisy in a seemingly tolerant Norwegian community, centered on a Romanian-Norwegian family's religious conservatism triggering unfounded accusations. Stan and Reinsve deliver strong performances in the legal drama, though subplots cause the 146-minute runtime to drag.
Mungiu has crafted a fiercely intelligent and gripping drama that provides no easy answers about right and wrong in a polarized society. The critic singles out the excellent, non-melodramatic performances by Stan and Reinsve along with the authentic supporting cast and beautiful cinematography.
Mungiu delivers an intelligent, ambiguous look at clashing cultural and religious ideals in a Norwegian village after child services investigate a conservative family for corporal punishment. Stan and Reinsve deliver outstanding, emotionally reserved performances in three languages amid the suffocating atmosphere.
Stan and Reinsve fit intuitively into Mungiu’s precise machinery in a film that turns on how a closed ecosystem absorbs foreign intrusion. The critic praises the meticulous narrative and visual approach that builds systems grinding characters down while holding ethics on trial without easy moral escapes.
The critic praises Mungiu's balanced examination of cultural clashes between religious immigrant parenting and progressive secular authority in Norway, highlighting nuanced performances especially from Lisa Carlehed and the film's probing of European identity and institutional power. The review notes some emotional restraint in the central family portrayal but commends the untidy, questioning approach to complex moral issues.
The critic describes the film as fascinating yet flawed, appreciating the understated performances by Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve and its exploration of faith, abuse, and community tensions but criticizing it as emotionally distancing, superficial in its insights, and less impactful than Mungiu's prior work like R.M.N.
Ordered by the weight we give each publication, then by score. Scores are normalised to 100; * means inferred from an unrated review. Summaries are ours, not quotations; follow the links for the reviews themselves. How we rate
