Featuring as many children as there are production logos introducing the film (Americans aren't accustomed to the immense challenge of funding an international production), the Gheorghiu family are the newest members of a small village somewhere in Norway. It is the kind of town one would expect to find in Scandinavia, complete with regular avalanches, perpetual snowfall, and breathtaking views of the local fjord. Led by Romanian father Mihai (Sebastian Stan) and Norwegian mother Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), the Gheorghius are immigrating from Bucharest, a place with deep-rooted right-wing traditions and evangelical influences. Immediately upon arrival, the family is treated with both respect and a sense of otherness by the secular townspeople, many of whom reject any discussion of religion.

The family's two eldest children, Elia and Emmanuel, attend the local school, where Mihai also provides IT support. While caring for two preschool-aged children and an infant, Lisbet takes a job at the local hospice center. At one point or another, members of the family are politely discouraged from bringing up their religious beliefs in the workplace. Lisbet must secretly conduct prayers for the deceased, while Mihai and the children are told not to play religious music on the cafeteria piano. During this adjustment period, everyone remains in a holding pattern, unintentionally testing the boundaries of what the other side will tolerate.

Things quickly reach an inflection point when Elia and Emmanuel's school bus driver overhears that Elia was punished for being careless. The gym teacher notices bruising on her neck, prompting a swift response from Child Services. The children are questioned about how their parents discipline them, while Mihai and Lisbet are greeted by the police. A formal investigation into possible abuse follows, with all five children removed from their home and placed in foster care. Confused and angered, Mihai and Lisbet see the intervention as an attack on their beliefs, a rebuke from the community for not fully assimilating.

Given that writer-director Cristian Mungiu is Romanian himself, one could oversimplistically assume that he would stack the deck in favor of the Gheorghius. In a small way, he does, often portraying the Norwegian bureaucrats as overly clinical and singularly focused on making an example of religious fundamentalism. The family's next-door neighbor has a daughter, Noora, who is the same age as Elia and Emmanuel and quickly becomes their best friend. Compared to the Gheorghiu children, she is unruly and seemingly in need of discipline. Yet her parents choose therapy, which does not appear to have much effect. Despite their ordinary tween tendencies, Elia and Emmanuel are respectful and well-behaved. Should Mihai and Lisbet receive exemplary credit for their seemingly successful approach to child-rearing?

Attempting to answer that question requires going down a path that raises infinitely more questions, almost all of them unanswerable. This is nothing new for Mungiu, whose filmography explores a laundry list of societal and political issues within contemporary Romania and Europe at large. Also winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, as Fjord has, was 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a minimalist exploration of the desperation surrounding abortion. 2012's Beyond the Hills tackled religious zealotry within an Eastern Orthodox convent, 2016's Graduation examined political corruption, and 2022's R.M.N. documented the xenophobic Ditrău incident. Fjord is his first film set outside his homeland, but the DNA of his work remains intact.

Within America, there is a widely held belief that religiously themed films belong to a lower artistic tier. Many cinephiles balked at Sound of Freedom unexpectedly sweeping the box office during the summer of 2023. The same could be said of Heaven Is for Real, War Room, God's Not Dead, and The King of Kings. I would argue that the issue has less to do with ideology and more to do with execution. These films are simply not very well made. There is a reason the Jesuit-centered Silence was one of the best films of its year: Martin Scorsese is incapable of making anything less than a great work of art. Mungiu belongs in a similar class, with his patient European style proving both intellectually and emotionally stimulating. Working almost exclusively in long takes and without a traditional score, he strips away the usual cinematic tools used to guide audience reactions, leaving viewers to wrestle with the material on their own.

Then again, as much as this is a rigorously engaging moral exercise, it is not wholly successful as a dramatic story. Outside of the two leads, both excellent in an understated register, the supporting performances, particularly those of the children, are distractingly weak. While their perspectives are central to the film's opening movements, they are largely removed from the narrative once separated from their parents. Their eventual reintroduction lacks the expected emotional weight, as does their budding rebellious relationship with Noora.

"Their culture" becomes a common phrase among the Norwegians when describing the Gheorghiu family. It is often delivered with a demeaning undertone, as though it serves to place a distancing label of otherness on something that should not extend beyond its place of origin. At a certain point, that fervent ideology begins to share many of the same qualities as the backwardness they attribute to the Gheorghius. Everyone is theoretically tolerant, but it is only when those beliefs are challenged that their true convictions emerge.

Neon will release Fjord in select theaters on October 09th, followed by a nationwide expansion on October 23rd.