Armand

Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel's Armand premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Caméra d'Or for best first feature, an award given across all sections of the festival. Tøndel, the grandson of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman, makes his feature debut with a chamber piece that owes more to Ruben Östlund and his own contemporaries than to family history. Norway selected the film as its entry for Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards, where it made the December shortlist.

Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World) plays Elisabeth, a recently widowed actress whose six-year-old son Armand has been accused of something serious by his best friend's parents. Ellen Dorrit Petersen and Endre Hellestveit are the other parents; Thea Lambrechts Vaulen is the young teacher trying to keep the meeting on the rails. Cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth shoots the empty school in long, watchful takes that turn corridors and classrooms into theatrical traps; Ella van der Woude's modernist score and Robin Hofwander's editing pull the film towards something closer to a fever dream.

Critics greeted the debut as one of the year's strongest, with Sight & Sound, The Guardian and IndieWire highlighting Reinsve's performance. The European Film Awards gave Tøndel the Prix FIPRESCI for European Discovery, the Hamptons International Film Festival named it Best Narrative Feature, and the DGA nominated him for first-time directing. Armand arrived as one of the most assured Norwegian debuts in years and as confirmation that Reinsve is among the most distinctive screen actors of her generation.