Renate Reinsve returned to Cannes this year at the center of another high-profile festival moment: she stars in Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, which earned the director his second Palme d’Or and is now Romania’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film race. The film — and Reinsve’s performance as a mother whose children are taken into state care — has reignited debates about religion, child protection and directorial method across Europe and the U.S.
A streak of festival success
Reinsve is no longer a festival newcomer. She first made global headlines after winning Best Actress at Cannes in 2021 for Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, a role that launched her international profile. Since then she’s worked repeatedly with leading auteurs and returned this year with a role that marks a pivot in tone and technique.
In Fjord, Reinsve plays Lisbet, the Norwegian wife of a Romanian educator — portrayed by Sebastian Stan — whose family is targeted by local suspicion and accusations that their religious methods are harming their children. Those complaints prompt social services to remove the children, setting the dramatic engine of the film.
From one director’s world to another
Reinsve describes her transition from Trier’s intimate, character-driven films to Mungiu’s austere, observational style as profound. She recalls a personal dream that she interprets as symbolic of moving between two creative worlds — an image that, for her, captured the shift in approach and tone.
Mungiu’s method is deliberately removed: the camera sits back, the frame resists manipulation, and scenes are built slowly through repeated takes. For Reinsve, that meant stripping away the more demonstrative tools she had used on stage and in prior films and trusting the subtleties of posture, timing and rhythm to communicate Lisbet’s interior life.
That process was at times unnerving. Mungiu’s preference for many takes and incremental changes forced the actor to adapt on set, learning to read his cues and to calibrate energy across long, quietly escalating scenes.
Acting against obvious emotion
Rather than signaling feelings overtly, Reinsve was asked to leave much unsaid — to present gestures, holds and small shifts in movement that would allow viewers to come to their own conclusions. She likened the effect she aimed for to recognizing the seriousness of an accident from a distance: a few observed motions and the audience understands what’s at stake.
- Film status: Fjord won the Palme d’Or and is Romania’s Oscar submission.
- Role: Reinsve plays Lisbet, a mother whose faith and parenting draw official scrutiny.
- Directorial approach: Mungiu favors a distanced camera and multiple takes to build meaning within the frame.
- Themes: Religion, child welfare, cultural misunderstanding, and the limits of judgment.
- Production notes: The film was shot in an isolated Norwegian village under difficult weather conditions.
Reinsve also dug deep into the lived details that shape Lisbet: the customs and rituals of the congregation, the way people greet and feed one another, and small visual markers such as head coverings and posture. This ethnographic work informed her choices, helping to create a character anchored in specific community practices even when the film avoids explicit moralizing.
She admits wrestling with the ethical distance between herself and a character whose values differ from her own. That tension, she says, became a central part of the performance — finding compassion without endorsing every belief or action on screen.
Local reaction and wider conversations
In Norway, where child protection services are generally regarded as robust, Reinsve says the film has prompted constructive conversations rather than outright condemnation. Professionals who saw Fjord have welcomed the film as a conversation starter, she reports, pointing out that the film highlights how cultural clashes can produce serious misunderstandings in social-services interventions.
Audiences in the United States, following the film’s release by Neon, have responded vigorously. Reinsve welcomes the debate, noting that creating films that shift audience empathy during their runtime — and that divide opinion — was part of Mungiu’s intention.
On-set life and the remote shoot
Fjord was filmed in a tiny Norwegian village of only a few dozen residents. The production encountered logistical hurdles: long supply runs, weather disruptions and periods when cast and crew were essentially isolated together. That seclusion created strong bonds among the team, an intimacy Reinsve says added to the film’s atmosphere.
She also mentions local lore about unexplained night-time noises at the hotel where the company stayed — an anecdote she recounts with a wry smile rather than a claim to literal hauntings. Those small, shared experiences contributed to the sense that the shoot was something out of the ordinary.
Having worked with Sebastian Stan before, Reinsve says their familiarity was an asset. Their prior collaboration removed the need for on-set warm-ups and let them convey a long-standing familiarity that the characters’ relationship required, even when that relationship’s dynamics are complex.
What Reinsve is doing next
Even as Fjord continues to circulate on the festival and awards circuit, Reinsve remains busy. She has completed work with Alexander Payne and is preparing to portray Mary Wollstonecraft in Mia Hansen-Løve’s If Love Should Die, a biographical drama that spans multiple countries and time periods. For that role she has been conducting archival research and visiting historical sites tied to Wollstonecraft’s life and writing.
Those projects underline a pattern in Reinsve’s career: an appetite for directors with distinctive methods and for roles that demand research, restraint and a willingness to adapt. She says the chance to learn new approaches on each set keeps her practice evolving and prevents creative complacency.
Fjord arrives at an intersection of timely topics — immigration, faith communities, and institutional decision-making — and its festival success has amplified those conversations. For Reinsve, the film represents both a personal artistic shift and a public moment: a film that pushes audiences to question quick judgments and to consider the small details that shape human lives.
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Hello, I’m Declan. I share my film reviews and discoveries with you to enrich your moviegoing experience.