In July 2025, Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård appeared at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival to promote his latest film, "Sentimental Value," written and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier. In a tribute event, he also reflected on an earlier stage of his career, when he played in a theatrical production of August Strindberg's "A Dream Play" under Ingmar Bergman. Skarsgård recalled Bergman as a "nice director," but also described him as a "tyrant and manipulator," and noted Bergman's youthful admiration for Adolf Hitler and his own admission that he cried when he learned of Hitler's death.
The review argues that Trier is working in a distinctly Bergmanesque world of wounded parents, damaged children and family pain, but with more tenderness, humor and emotional breathing room than Bergman allowed. It calls "Sentimental Value" an emotionally demanding drama, yet one that uses dry wit and patience to reveal its characters without reducing them to family roles. The film has already won the Jury Prize at Cannes, the festival's second-highest honor, and the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Skarsgård plays Gustav Borg, a 70-year-old film director whose absence scarred the lives of his two daughters after he divorced their mother, psychotherapist Cecilie, played by Marianne W. Klasen. The older daughter, Nora, played by Renate Reinsve, became a successful but unstable actress, while the younger daughter, Agnes, played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, has remained the steadier one. Gustav returns after 15 years to the family house, where his mother once died by suicide, to ask Nora to star in a personal new film he has written for her, but she angrily refuses.
The story also follows Gustav's attempt to mount the film with help from American star Rachel Kemp, played by Elle Fanning, who sees one of his earlier films in Deauville and becomes a possible collaborator. As production moves toward shooting at the family home, Agnes researches her grandmother's history through World War II archive material, while the sisters' relationship deepens. The review praises Reinsve and Lilleaas, highlights the house as a symbol of inherited pain, and says Trier allows art to become a place where the damage can finally be seen.
