Fjord at the London Film Festival: Cannes' Palme d'Or winner reviewed
Cristian Mungiu's Palme d'Or winner, with Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, played the BFI London Film Festival, and critics are split on what it says.
Fjord, this year's Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, has been part of the BFI London Film Festival 2026 programme. The festival runs from 7 to 18 October, so today is its final day. Here is what reviewers have made of it.
The story
Directed by Romania's Cristian Mungiu, Fjord follows the Gheorghiu family, who move from Romania to Norway. According to The Reviews Hub, the parents are devout Christians who soon find themselves up against the Child Protection unit and a community that distrusts them. The Upcoming says the trouble starts when the school's progressive leaning clashes with the children's religious upbringing, and bruises on the eldest child's body prompt the authorities to rush to judgment.
Both outlets compare it to Anatomy of a Fall: a small town in snowy mountains, a legal case, and an audience kept guessing.
The cast
Sebastian Stan plays the father, Mihai, and Renate Reinsve plays his Norwegian wife, Lisbet (spelled Lisbeth by The Upcoming). The Upcoming notes it reunites the pair from A Different Man, and says it is Stan's first acting in his mother tongue.
Both critics remark on how unrecognisable they are. The Upcoming says Mungiu deliberately undercuts their charisma: Stan is bald and drifts through scenes with quiet resignation, while Reinsve is muted, her unflattering wardrobe, headbands and glasses giving her a recessive presence. The Reviews Hub describes Stan's Mihai as taciturn, with a darker side and a shorter temper emerging as the film goes on. It finds Reinsve's Lisbet harder to read, a mother and care home worker whose near superhuman competence casts doubt in the viewer.
The Reviews Hub also singles out Ellen Dorrit Peterson as the Child Protection worker Gunda and Christian Rubeck as the prosecuting attorney.
How it looks and what it argues
The Reviews Hub calls it an austere tale filmed in shades of black, white and grey, with two moments of magic realism that gesture to the miraculous. It also notes the conversations move between Norwegian, English and Romanian, where mistranslation is easy. The Upcoming describes a camera kept at a safe distance, bearing witness as impartially as possible.
The two reviews read the politics differently. The Reviews Hub says the film has been slammed as too conservative, but argues the characters are more complex than that: Mihai and Lisbet are not easy heroes, and there is an edge of darkness to them. The Upcoming reads it as a script attentive to cultural bias, discrimination and ignorance, with a quiet humour in the absurdity of institutions unequipped for human nuance. It calls Fjord perhaps one of the most vital films about democratic values in recent years.
The Upcoming adds that at the Cannes press conference Mungiu stressed the film is not about a conflict between two nations, and that the legislation he based the story on has changed in recent years.
Know before you go
- Festival: BFI London Film Festival 2026, 7 to 18 October.
- Film: Fjord, directed by Cristian Mungiu.
- Tickets and screening times: check the London Film Festival website.
Sources: The Reviews Hub, The Upcoming
