Skip to main content
Armand film image; close on person's profile

Armand

Panorama

This event has passed

Canadian Premiere

When six-year-old Armand is accused of abusing another boy, his mother Elisabeth (The Worst Person in the World’s Renate Reinsve) is called in for a school meeting with the boy’s parents and a panel of key staffers. Volatile confrontations between the adults quickly follow, as do revelations about their own tangled histories. With the boys themselves never seen or heard from, it soon becomes clear that this sordid situation is about much more than just the children.

The debut feature of Norwegian writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel (the grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann), Armand is a lacerating drama about the social controls we permit in our daily lives—and impose on our children. As the plot spirals outward from its claustrophobic, chamber-play premise, Reinsve matches the unpredictable narrative with a thrilling, live-wire turn as a protective mother caught in an impossible position. Winner of this year’s Camera d’Or at Cannes, it is a story to reckon with.

 

Caméra d’Or, Cannes 2024

 

Intense. The film starts by promising a bourgeois social drama about secrets and lies, suspicions and rivalries, and the troubled waters of juvenile and adult sexuality. What it ultimately becomes is much harder to define, but the result is resonant and haunting – and should spark plenty of post-screening discussions.

Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily

Director
Cast

Renate Reinsve, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Thea Lambrechts Vaulen, Endre Hellestveit, Øystein Røger, Vera Veljovic

Credits
Country of Origin

Norway/Netherlands/
Germany/Sweden

Year

2024

Language

In Norwegian with English subtitles

18+

At International Village

19+

At Fifth Avenue

116 min
Action & Suspense Award Winners Drama
Film i Väst, Eye Eye Pictures, KeplerFilm, ONE TWO Films

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits & Director

Executive Producer

Dyveke Bjørkly Graver

Producer

Andrea Berentsen Ottmar

Screenwriter

Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel

Cinematography

Pål Ulvik Rokseth

Editor

Robert Krantz

Original Music

Ella van der Woude

Art Director

Victoria Waelgaard

Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel headshot; Armand director

Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel

Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel is a trained film director from Westerdals Oslo School of Arts, Communication and Technology. He debuted with the short film Bird Hearts (2015), which won the Golden Chair in Grimstad and was nominated for a national Amanda award among other honors. In 2017, he made the short film Fanny, which was also nominated for an Amanda. Tøndel was one of ten European filmmakers in the 2015 Future Frame Program at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, organized by the European Film Promotion in cooperation with Variety. Armand is his first feature film.

Photo by Mediebank

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

Our Lady of the Nile

Dir. Atiq Rahimi
106 min

Veronica and Virginia are inseparable friends at an elite Catholic boarding school, Our Lady of the Nile, but what binds them together is the very thing that separates them forever. We are in Rwanda, 1973, and tribal tensions are simmering ominously.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Night Moves: Street Photography, Poetry and Music with Rodney DeCroo
man playing a guitar singing into a microphone with a bus shelter in the background

Night Moves: Street Photography, Poetry and Music with Rodney DeCroo

120 min

To mark the publication of Night Moves, his first book of street photography (shot in and around Commercial Drive), singer-songwriter, poet and playwright Rodney DeCroo shares his images, stories and music, along with his band The Wise Blood.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Secret Mall Apartment

Dir. Jeremy Workman
91 min

The stranger-than-fiction true story of a group of artists who built and furnished a hidden apartment inside a mall, remaining undetected for years. This is an absurdly fun and surprisingly profound film about gentrification and art.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Teacher

Dir. Farah Nabulsi
118 min

In this potent thriller, English teacher Basem witnesses the murder of a teenager by a Israeli settler. While the subsequent investigation rolls slowly towards a foregone conclusion, the teacher is caught up in a parallel kidnapping case...

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Bob Trevino Likes It

Dir. Tracie Laymon
102 min

When her toxic, narcissistic dad cuts her out of his life, Lily Trevino looks him up on Facebook and happens across his namesake, Bob (John Leguizamo), a gentle, genial contractor who lives nearby, and who proves an altogether better dad...

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Encampments

Dir. Michael T. Workman & Kei Pritsker
82 min

When pro-Palestine protests took hold of Columbia last year, the filmmakers were there from the beginning. This documentary charts the mounting tensions between students and the administration, as the protests were picked up across North America.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre