Director Joachim Trier broke down in tears behind the camera while filming Sentimental Value, his new poignant story about a quietly broken family, which received an extraordinary 19-minute standing ovation at the end of its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

“It sounds cliché,” he said, “but I cried a lot while shooting this film because I was so moved by the actors,” who play members of an artistic family in Oslo who cannot get along despite all their supposed sophistication.

"The actors are my friends. I know they were half characters, half themselves. And that they also struggled with various problems,“ said the director of ”The Worst Person in the World," which earned Norway two Oscar nominations and won the Best Actress award at Cannes in 2021 for newcomer Renate Reinsve.

Many critics that same year said the film should have won the top prize, the Palme d'Or.

“We were also a family,” Trier added while rehearsing his script around the kitchen table in the beautiful old wooden house in Oslo where the film was shot, which is itself a character in the film.

The heads that constantly collide in Trier's on-screen family are the often absent father, an art director who has long since stepped out of the role, played by Swedish legend Stellan Skarsgård, and his daughter, a theater actress (Reinsve).

“I think many families carry wounds and grief within them. And talking often doesn't help. It turns into arguments. We get stuck in our positions, in the roles we unconsciously assign ourselves,” Trier added. | BGNES