12/21
Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing boundaries against his best friend at elementary school. Norway’s official submission for the ‘Best International Feature Film’ category of the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. The feature debut from Halfdan Ullman Tønder, the grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman, is a part-allegorical, part-naturalistic dissection of 21st-century parenting and the education system, and its handling of an “unfortunate incident” between two 6-year-old boys. Renate Reinsve is the eccentric mother of Armand, the alleged perpetrator of said incident, and as she finds herself under scrutiny by her son’s teacher, the school administration, and the other boy’s parents, the film slowly descends into an interrelational abyss, a limbo from which good things can never emerge. Ullman Tønder’s purpose and position are solid, as is his artistic expression, which is clearly inspired by the works of his grandfather and, perhaps, also to some extent, by those of Kubrick. And although the narrative itself sometimes seems uneven and the film is poorly edited, Armand is in many ways a return and homage to pure cinema, and for this it deserves to be acclaimed.