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
Renate Reinsve, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Thea Lambrechts Vaulen, Endre Hellestveit, Øystein Røger, Vera Veljovic
Norway/Netherlands/
Germany/Sweden
2024
In Norwegian with English subtitles
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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
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
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