NZIFF Round Table Reviews: Fjord

REVIEW | NZIFF |  ISSUE TEN | ISOLATION

This is part of a series of roundtable discussions and extended dialogues conducted by Ricky Lai (@rickthelai), Trevor Pronoso (@CleverGurl), Madeline Smith (@prime4illusion), and Caeden Tipler (@ctipler) on films that have premiered at NZIFF 2026.

The following exchange is between Ricky and Caeden on Cristian Mungiu's latest film, Fjord.

Fjord (2026)

dir. Cristian Mungiu

Norway, 146 mins

Ricky: Early on in Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, the lead character Otilia is told by a hotel receptionist that her booking doesn't exist in the system. Otilia grows increasingly frustrated ('What am I supposed to do?'), and the receptionist (who seems to be dealing with her own problems as well) asks her sternly to calm her tone. This is basically a dismissal. This interaction recurs throughout Fjord, where the frustrated parents of the Georghiu family—well, Sebastian Stan as a coldly seething Mihai, mostly—are straining uphill against a branch of Child Protective Service bureaus and lawyers who already appear to be taking their words in fraught faith, who don't take a liking to their 'tone of voice'. There is, also of course, the issue around the legal statements with potential miswordings: Mihai disagrees but is coerced into signing a report that says he slapped his kid, and the children, whose statements were instead paraphrased from an in-person meeting but not recorded (unlike their parents), were either 'hit', 'slapped' or 'kicked' by their parents. It is an ambiguous word choice, seemingly hinging on a mistranslation between Norwegian and Romanian. Mungiu seems partially interested in systems of control and their interactions, even at the micro-level: how an individual navigates an administration that, at every level, can be undermined by mishandled communications and micro-aggressions.

I found Fjord really engaging and uncomfortably compelling up to a point, when I felt the courtroom sequence in the third act lose a lot of dramatic steam the further it went. I wonder how you felt about it—did it keep you engaged and/or tense throughout?

Caeden: You make a really great point. A core idea in Fjord is the challenge of navigating bureaucracy in an unfamiliar culture. A challenge that is elevated if your own culture is seen as backward or less than, as is the case for Romanian Mihai in Norway. This is seen in the small things—frequent name mispronunciations by repeat offenders, for one—but also in the core premise of the investigation by Child Protection, which rests on a faulty translation. The bigger idea at play is whether this level of bureaucracy is ultimately worth it, whether it does more good than harm, and whether it upholds its mission of protecting the most vulnerable population: children. The tension between these ideas is what kept me engaged with the film. In many ways, it also operates as a tense courtroom drama.

We have both said it took us some time to work through our thoughts after seeing this last night, but I'm curious about your initial reaction as you left the theatre.

Ricky: Well, I certainly was under the impression by the end that no surprises were left, so that ending shot, which proved me wrong, really bowled me over. I like that it's a callback to a background detail in a scene that's easy to miss. I like that it's a risk, a sudden break from realism given how grounded and legalistic everything else is. I like that it holds just long enough before a cut to black, leaving you wondering: 'wait, what did I just see?' That's trust in the audience, and for a film that I think is successfully provocative but also incredibly flawed in leading those provocations towards a discernible conclusion (to what end, really?), I respect it so much—especially in a film whose elaborate think tank of competing Scandinavian worldviews leaves little to the imagination.

For so long in Fjord, the narrative straddles the middle between two 'sides', a kind of ambiguity that can get frustrating the more it broadly gestures toward 'both-sides'-ism. Mungiu doesn't quite do that, in my opinion: he picks a stance but not a side, and that ending shot not only unlocks so much of what he thinks, but is also perhaps more hopeful (for these kids) than it looks. Why are we shown the Georghiu children, the few times we are with them, plotting their escape, taking the boat out unattended, and bumping from their bedroom window in the middle of the night? It's so we get to see that, beyond the constraints of their parents' strictly conservative worldview and disciplinary methods, kids eventually discover what they want out of life one way or another—and that it may indeed run counter to their parents' best interests. That's the experience you get through education, travelling outside your peripheries, and meeting your neighbours. Mungiu, of course, sympathises with the Romanians regarding their cultural alienation. Despite this, he ultimately recognises that the Norwegian learning environment is healthy. Of course, the kids love their parents, and they'll probably keep praying every night. But they also enjoy hanging out with Noora. They enjoy the boat, and they were looking forward to the cabin. They're going to discover the joy of pop music one day or another, and it'll happen regardless of how far their parents want to run from a world outside their provinces.

How did you feel about the depiction of the overseas' culture war' stuff (complete with far-right picketers and signposts outside the courtroom)? Mixed feelings on that part, personally.

Caeden: I also loved the final shot, and how it called back to the first night the kids snuck away onto the boat. The surreal nature was a welcome break from the intensity of the last few scenes. As she walked towards the boat, I let go of some of the tension I had been holding onto. The point you make about the film showing us the children moving through the world outside their parents' grip rings true to me. The film wasn't saying Norway was bad or that progressive ways of raising children are bad. In fact, if the children had stayed, it likely would have been a good balance for them. It's just that neither the authorities nor their parents ultimately gave them that chance.

The idea of including a culture war element was clever. Right from the start, I thought it was the kind of case you'd read about online. I was intrigued by the film's choice to go that way. I liked how it showed some of the reasons it went viral; the Romanian authorities, right-wing media, etc., were pushing it. However, I think this idea needed to go a bit further. They make a reference/joke about the Sami people, so maybe there needed to be more about how the Norwegian authorities have weaponised their power against other minorities in the past, but it's only the 'white' (I know there is some ethnic-based discrimination against Romanians), Christian, nuclear family who gets public outrage on their behalf. If you're Norwegian, let alone indigenous to that place, it's also not as simple to get up and leave as it is for this family of recent arrivals with some means. On the flip side, it would have been interesting to know more about the ideas and values held by the Child Protection Service people. I know that's not the focus of this film, but the line that children in Norway can sue the state as adults if they don't intervene in them being abused was really thought-provoking. What about the public pressure on these agencies when they don't intervene, and a child is killed?

Ricky: Those words refresh in my memory how 'white' this movie is, which of course sounds like a critique, but it isn't—Mungiu has directly tackled European racism in R.M.N., and in Fjord, non-white/indigenous populations have a structuring absence, mentioned only in passing, like you said. The culture war stuff felt a little painted on. It was always going to be addressed, because how could it not be? But there's something quite wimpy about how it's evoked: Mihai's 'last resort' in the third act, before being rendered ultimately irrelevant (it's brought up by the prosecution, then dismissed); like it was only ever there so we could award it points for topicality. The idea of reaching overseas to 'import' culture-war punditry is interesting, though, and ultimately I feel like Mungiu wrote it in to serve as a counterpoint to the small-town provincialism. (I thought about Eddington, honestly.)

Oh, also. I loved that Noora had a Löded Diper poster.

Caeden: European racism can feel very foreign to me, as here in New Zealand, our racism has a lot more in common with countries like the United States or Canada in the 21st Century, i.e. there is no Western vs Eastern European divide; all of us are simply Pākehā by the second generation (even if that has not been the case historically). I agree that the culture-war elements can feel tacked on at times (and it feels more this way the more I think about it.) The saving grace is that the culture-war thread acts as an extension of the core Romanian vs Norwegian cultural divide, which helps create a sense of thematic coherence in my mind. The line from the prosecution about how the parents claiming that their Christianity is a religion of peace and goodness would be easier to believe if there wasn't an angry mob outside was also an excellent payoff, even if it ultimately wasn't as fleshed out as it could have been.

Ricky: Right on. I have to admit that in the week since seeing Fjord, it's turned a little cold on me. Perhaps it's because I saw 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, where Mungiu keeps its strongest, prevailing political ideas peripheral. But Fjord laying everything out in conversation results in a film that has already done a lot of the thinking for me, even after 'unlocking' what it is really about. Compared to contemporary 'discourse-heavy' texts like R.M.N., Juror #2, and Red Rooms (to name a few), its deductions are constrained to what has been said within the think tank. In my head, the provoked discourse feels like it has already outlasted the film itself.

May the Georghiu children discover Rodrick Rules—for what is adolescence without it?

Caeden: I’m with you in that the more I think about Fjord, the less I’m sure about my feelings towards it. That’s not to say there aren’t some excellent set pieces! While I feel like we covered the discourse, I just want to give a shout-out to how visually stunning it was. Shooting on location wins every time, and this film proves that. 

I’m looking forward to a rewatch—and hopefully solidifying my thoughts on many of the ideas we have discussed!