Oscars 2027: Renate Reinsve On How Empathy is Constantly Shifting in ‘Fjord’ [VIDEO]

Cristian Mungiu’s mesmerizing drama, Fjord, boasts truly immersive work by Renate Reinsve, as Lisbet, the devoted wife of Sebastian Stan’s Mihai. They portray an Evangelical Christian couple, Romanian and Norwegian respectively, with five children who have relocated from Romania to a proudly progressive coastal village in Norway where there is little tolerance for religious zealotry.

When their teenage daughter shows up at school with bruises, abuse is immediately assumed, and Child Services is notified which results in extreme measures being taken in the community’s rush to judgement.

As the layered and complex narrative unfolds you might find yourself shifting judgements and empathy and just when you think you’ve finally landed on a side, think again. There are no easy right or wrong answers. That the film exists right now is a miracle, considering the current extreme division in our society.

The film won this year’s Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or and is one of the International Feature Academy Award front-runners as well as a Best Picture candidate. Reinsve’s understated turn is also, rightly, in the Oscar conversation.

The Norwegian born thesp had quite the auspicious lead film debut as Julie in the critically-acclaimed Joaquim Trier film, The Worst Person in the World, which won her the Best Actress Award at Cannes in 2021 and was later nominated for two Oscars including Best International Feature, and two BAFTAs including Best Female Lead. Prior to Worst Person, she appeared in small roles in a number of Norwegian movies including her debut in Trier’s Oslo, 31 August in 2011. 

In 2024, she astonished in Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s exceptional first feature, Armand, which was Norway’s Academy Award submission for Best International Feature and made the short list. She also co-starred opposite Sebastian Stan in Aaron Schimberg’s acclaimed, A Different Man. She also starred in Piero Messina’s Another End and Thea Hvistendahl’s Handling the Dead.

On TV she appered opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in the Apple+ thriller, Presumed Innocent.

Last year, she delivered her most celebrated performance to date opposite Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning in Joaquim Trier’s sublime Sentimental Value, which received nine Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actress (her first nod). The film justly won the Best International Feature Award, among many other accolades.

She is currently shooting Mia Hansen-Løve’s If I Should Die in which she plays Mary Wollstonecraft.

Fjord is currently playing in theaters in N.Y. and L.A. and will go wide, via NEON, on October 23, 2026.

The Contending had the pleasure of a VIDEO chat with Renate.