Cannes knockout “Sentimental Value” celebrated its New York City premiere at the 63rd annual New York Film Festival on Tuesday, September 30. Renate Reinsve and director Joachim Trier reunite after their acclaimed “The Worst Person in the World,” with co-stars Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. The film follows two daughters’ fraught relationship with their auteur father, put to the test after the death of their mother.
We caught up on the carpet with Skarsgård, who reflected on working with the Oscar-nominated director for the first time. “[It was] extremely good,” he told IndieWire. “He sits right beside the camera and he watches the detail in your performance. He’s after what happens inside the human being, no matter what you say, and that is what I am, too, doing in my acting. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” We currently have him as one of our frontrunners in the Best Supporting Actor race at next year’s Oscars.
We also talked a bit about the actor’s relationship with Lars von Trier. Skarsgård has starred in six of the director’s films: “The Kingdom,” “Breaking the Waves,” “Dancer in the Dark,” “Dogville,” “Melancholia,” and “Nymphomaniac.” “He’s a very nice man, highly intelligent, very vulnerable and has a great sense of humor,” he said.
“There’s a misconception of him in America — ‘Oh it’s hard to work with him’ — it’s not,” he continued. “He’s the easiest man to work with ever and I can try very ambitious ideas with him.”
In an oral history of “Dogville” with IndieWire in 2023, Skarsgård reflected again on working with von Trier, saying that “all films with Lars are memorable … because they’re all films that have never been made before. It’s a delicious thing to be working with. But of course, it was very exciting. We were living on a small pension in rural Sweden, and it was a fabulous cast. With Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, everybody. It was amazing.”
“Sentimental Value” won the Cannes Grand Prix. The IndieWire review applauded the layered writing of the feature, with Skarsgård’s director character Gustav Borg literally “directing his daughter on how to forgive him in the wake of his ex-wife’s death.” Gustav does not apologize for leaving their family when Reinsve’s Nora was just a child, but instead, he believes he can be absolved by casting her in an autobiographical Netflix drama about his own life.
Neon will release the film in select theaters November 7. Check out the trailer here.