Joachim Trier Los Angeles Sparks Historic Oscar Win, Sends Norwegian Film to New Heights
joachim trier’s family drama Sentimental Value won the Oscar for Best International Feature at the 98th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, becoming the first Norwegian film to take the honour. The victory was the film’s first win after seven nominations.
Joachim Trier Acceptance Speech and Political Remarks
Accepting the award, Joachim Trier said he felt compelled to speak on behalf of the international community of filmmakers, describing the year’s nominees as “important, beautiful films that reflect our present crises and the crisis of the past. ” He closed by paraphrasing the American writer James Baldwin, invoking the line that all adults bear responsibility for all children and urging voters not to back politicians who fail to take that duty seriously. His remarks followed a moment onstage earlier when the award presenter drew substantial applause for a separate political call as he came onstage.
Sentimental Value’s Awards Run and What the Win Means
Sentimental Value premiered at the Cannes film festival in May 2025, where it won the second-place Grand Prix. The film later won the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language and six European film awards, including best film. The story centers on a film director, played by Stellan Skarsgård, who is estranged from his adult daughters, portrayed by Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. The Oscar victory caps a season in which the film accrued broad recognition across major international ceremonies.
Oscar Race, Rivals and Season Context
The Best International Feature category included titles such as It Was Just An Accident, The Secret Agent and The Voice of Hind Rajab. One odds model had placed Sentimental Value ahead in the run-up to the ceremony, assigning it a 73 percent chance of victory over The Secret Agent’s 24 percent. The latter, a historical political thriller, had enjoyed strong momentum on the awards circuit, with wins at critics’ associations, the Critics’ Choice Awards and the Golden Globes, and a high-profile performance by its star at those ceremonies.
The season highlighted the unpredictability of the international race. Sentimental Value’s performance at BAFTA — a high-profile precursor with voter overlap — helped its standing, but historical precedents show that films with larger nomination tallies can still lose the international prize. Past seasons offered examples in which widely nominated foreign-language films did not carry the Best International Feature category despite strong recognition elsewhere, underscoring the category’s distinct voting dynamics.
For Norway, the win marks a landmark moment: seven previous Norwegian nominations had not produced a winner in this category. For the film and its creative team, the Oscar adds an important international seal to a run that already included major festival and continental awards.
What happens next will be shaped by how distributors, exhibitors and international festivals respond to the film’s elevated profile, and by the continued conversations around the political and social themes Trier highlighted onstage. The Academy’s choice has formally placed Sentimental Value in a short list of internationally recognized films whose season-long campaigns reshaped attention for cinema produced outside the English-language mainstream.
