Because evangelical Christians are typically caricatured, villainized, or misunderstood in Hollywood films, the rare movie that dignifies and sympathizes with believers comes as a refreshing shock. Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord is a movie like that.
What does it mean that this film—about a Romanian evangelical family who moves to Norway and is persecuted for their conservative beliefs—was made in 2026? And what does it mean that it won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, one of cinema’s highest accolades?
Perhaps it’s more evidence of a vibe shift reflecting Western culture’s disenchantment with secular progressivism and newfound appreciation for traditional religion. I don’t know. But whatever the reasons for its existence, I’m thankful for Fjord. This movie is a gift—and not just to Christians. It’s the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.
Based on a True Story
You might remember the true story on which Fjord is based. Joe Carter wrote about it at The Gospel Coalition in 2016, when the Bodnariu family’s case became an international flash point for debates about religious liberty and parental rights.
The conflict arose when evangelical couple Marius and Ruth Bodnariu moved from Romania to Norway to raise their five children. The vast differences between their conservative values (including teaching their kids biblical sexual ethics), and the values of Norway’s progressive secularism came to a head in November 2015. That’s when the Barnevernet (Norway’s version of Child Protective Services) seized the Bodnarius’ children, ranging in age from 3 months to 9 years, and placed them in three different foster homes with limited parental visitation.
The Barnevernet justified this extreme move based on suspicions of spanking (illegal in Norway) as well as religious indoctrination. Cruelly separated from their children (including a breastfeeding infant), Marius and Ruth fought through legal means—and by rallying international pressure—to get their children back.
The rare movie that dignifies and sympathizes with believers comes as a refreshing shock.
Fjord follows the spine of the true story fairly closely but changes the names, characters, and plot points a bit. The film renames the family as the Gheorghius, with parents Mihai (Sebastian Stan), who is Romanian, and wife Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), who is Norwegian. In the movie, Mihai and Lisbet move to Norway with their five children to be closer to Lisbet’s family.
The other central characters in Fjord are the Gheorghius’ Norwegian neighbors, the Halbergs. Mats Halberg (Markus Scarth Tønseth) is the headmaster of the local school, and his wife, Mia (Lisa Carlehed), is a lawyer. Their daughter, Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen), is a rebellious teenager whose erratic behavior starts to stabilize when she befriends the Gheorghius’ eldest daughter, whose Christian morals prove a good influence.
Tale of Two Families
The larger societal tension the film explores—a religious conservative minority versus progressive hegemony—plays out in the microcosm of the fragile neighborly relationship between the Gheorghius and Halbergs. Initially, the Halbergs are polite and hospitable to their newly arrived neighbors. But soon, Mats and Mia aren’t even answering the door when Lisbet comes knocking.
As the film progresses, Mia becomes more sympathetic to the Gheorghius’ plight—even offering legal advocacy. While it’s clear she doesn’t like their worldview, she’s willing to respect their convictions. But Mats is hard-hearted and sees the Gheorghiu family only as frightening aliens. He views their Bible teaching—and strict rules forbidding worldly influence—as dangerous “brainwashing.” But the reckless misbehavior of Mats’s own daughter, Noora, suggests his permissive parenting style isn’t a more effective alternative.
Fjord (rated R for some language, a scene of self-harm, and brief nudity of corpses), presents two ways of life to the audience, allowing viewers to decide which seems more likely to lead to flourishing. In one scene, we see the four eldest Gheorghiu children praying together in their bedroom, while out their window we see a raucous party happening at the Halberg house: Noora’s birthday party, which the Gheorghiu children were forbidden by their parents to attend. Are the kids cruelly sheltered in a joyless, legalistic home? Or are their parents wise to keep them set apart from the world? Fjord puts these sorts of questions to the audience.
Even though Noora and the two older Gheorghiu kids become friends, their lifestyle contrast is clear. The Gheorghiu kids are frequently seen playing happily or singing hymns like “At the Cross” around the piano. Foul-mouthed, phone-addicted Noora, meanwhile, talks back to her parents and in one scene cuts her wrist as a threat to get her way. Which of these children would you want your own kids to be influenced by? Which family is a better testament to the child-rearing wisdom of the parents?
This question is pertinent in religious liberty debates. A progressive society might find the beliefs of a religiously conservative minority abhorrent and worthy of persecution. But the behavior of churchgoers—statistically more generous with money and volunteering time, happier and more civically engaged, and likely to reduce crime levels in their community—should lead secular progressives to want these folks around. Weird as they might seem culturally, the religiously devout tend to be good neighbors. This is an inconvenient truth for secular progressives and one reason why many of them hate Fjord.
Chilly Environment
The movie’s rural fjord setting looms large visually, lending the film a chilly ambience where frigid water, snowfall, and avalanches pervade. The geography is cold and foreboding, as is the too-clean architecture of the many government buildings that figure into the plot. But coldest of all in Fjord are the people and the relational postures among “neighbors” that might seem kind but mask fear and loathing.
Fjord’s title captures what Mungiu has described as the “Nordic attitude” that combines both the literal coldness of the region and the emotional coldness—“a sort of openness that they have to be very polite but not to engage in conversations.”
Yet “politeness” and “openness,” and especially a feigned embrace of liberal tolerance and pluralism, creates shaky conditions for community amid diversity. The “Nordic attitude,” Mungiu suggests, isolates more than it connects, creating emotional distance not unlike the physical distance a fjord imposes on villages on either side. And like the pretty mountain snow that can collapse into an avalanche at any moment, the “peace” of a pluralistic society can break down in an instant—especially when “tolerance” is a virtue more preached than practiced and “diversity” is a safe buzzword more than a risky reality.
Chilling Message
More than any film I’ve seen, Fjord shows how progressivism has become a new form of fundamentalism, ruthlessly imposing rigid laws and moralism even on those whose faith calls them to think and live differently.
Fjord shows how progressivism has become a new form of fundamentalism, ruthlessly imposing rigid laws and moralism even on those whose faith calls them to think and live differently.
It’s notable that the melody of “Amazing Grace” opens the film and shows up a few times throughout. At one point, Mihai plays the hymn (just instrumental) on a keyboard at his kids’ school lunchroom and a teacher is quick to say, “Can you play something more cheerful, maybe?”
There’s no grace for any shred of Christianity, no public accommodation for Christian faith as a potentially integral part of one’s identity. Evangelism in schools is strictly forbidden—if it’s religious in nature. The educators are evangelizing for other things, of course: sexual progressivism, multiculturalism, secular values. But keep the Bible out!
As one administrator points out in the film, students have the right to share their sexual orientation at school but not their religious views. Another character points out that the Norwegian government in theory defends the rights of minorities, “but only if you’re in the right minority.” Evangelical Christian immigrants are clearly not a minority Norway is eager to protect.
Several times in the film, Noora labels the Gheorghiu kids “sheep” for not joining her in her unwise adolescent rebellion. But as Fjord goes on, it becomes clear the real sheep are the Norwegian bureaucrats and rule-followers unwilling to allow any nonconformity. And they’re more like wolves in sheep’s clothing: They insist on altruistic motives (“We’re acting in the best interest of the children!”) but they’re really power-happy ideologues preying on vulnerable minorities.
Horrors of Bureaucratic Paper-Pushing
Several characters in Fjord strike me as some of the scariest I’ve seen on screen this year. They aren’t obviously villains; they’re just icy, pantsuit-wearing bureaucrats hiding their humanity beneath government policies and protocols. But that makes them even more dangerous. As Hannah Arendt famously observed, evil can be as banal as prioritizing bureaucratic compliance over listening to your conscience.
A character named Gunda (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) is especially terrifying. She’s the lead Barnevernet agent on the Gheorghiu case—and the film’s chief antagonist. “We don’t need your permission [to take your children away],” she tells Lisbet, and later shuttles the nursing infant away from Lisbet in a government van (a brutal scene for any parent to watch). In each instance, Gunda is dutifully “doing her job.” Yet she has no empathy or ability to speak outside the prescribed lines of legalese and middle-management duty. It’s subhuman and scary.
Of the many deeply unsettling scenes in the film, one that stands out happens when Mihai and Lisbet are finally allowed to visit two of their kids after weeks of forced separation. The visit happens in a highly controlled Barnevernet office setting, and what should be a warm reunion is suffocated by surveillance.
Mungiu frames this shot with the family in the middle (two parents and two kids) and three leering officials awkwardly surrounding them at close distance: Gunda taking notes on a clipboard, another employee filming the encounter, and a lawyer standing by. The family’s privacy in this intimate moment is stripped away as they’re forced into a surveillance cage by an authoritarian regime.
Who Knows What’s Best for Children?
Certainly, government protections for endangered children are important. In situations where children are at real risk, child welfare agencies are a grace. But Fjord shows how harmful it can be when governments overstep their bounds, assuming a “nanny state” moral authority that supersedes that of the biological mom and dad.
Constantly in the film, Mihai and Lisbet are put on the defensive, made to sound crazy: for their belief in spanking as a valid form of discipline; for their choice to withhold YouTube, dancing, and modern music from their kids.
In one courtroom scene, a prosecutor asks Mihai if he believes marriage is only between a man and a woman. Mihai replies in the affirmative, but adds, “Do I have to feel guilty about that?” Here again, the government is stepping out of its lane—no longer just serving and protecting citizens but preaching at them, guilting them for ideological noncompliance.
It’s fascinating that in-demand actors like Reinsve (Oscar nominated this year for Sentimental Value) and Stan (also Oscar nominated for his role as young Donald Trump in The Apprentice) would be interested in inhabiting these conservative Christian roles. Reinsve is a Norwegian mother and is playing a Norwegian mother, so her resonance with this role makes some sense. But what drew Stan to play a traditional, patriarchal Romanian evangelical?
Stan was born in Romania and grew up in the Romanian Orthodox Church. Living under the shadow of Communism, he likely knows well the horrors of an authoritarian state. “Norway never had Communism,” one Romanian points out to Mihai in the film. It’s easier to drift into authoritarianism when you’ve never suffered under the extreme dangers of it. Socialism can often be a “luxury belief” of those cushioned from its worst effects.
Timely Warning
Why is Fjord the best movie of 2026 so far? It’s not only because the film is beautifully acted, directed, and shot. Nor is it only because the film is a timely conversation starter from a highly respected director. It’s that it dares to challenge progressive orthodoxy and forces “tolerant” arthouse audiences to test the limits of their tolerance.
Fjord forces ‘tolerant’ arthouse audiences to test the limits of their tolerance.
Evangelical Christians have long been the one culture left out of progressivism’s embrace of multiculturalism. Near the end of Fjord, the local school holds a “cultures day” that ostensibly celebrates all cultures. The irony is clear. The culture of the Gheorghiu family is so uncelebrated in Norway that it eventually forces them to move back to Romania.
In the film’s final scene, the family takes a ferry and escapes the fjord—and further persecution. The last shot shows heartbroken Noora standing on the dock, crying for the friends she’ll never see again. The film’s final words are from the eldest Gheorghiu daughter, yelling from the ferry: “Noora, be careful!”
Noora (whose name sounds awfully close to “Norway”) lives in one of the safest countries in the world—so a call to safetyism isn’t the parting advice here. Rather, it’s a warning to be careful in deeper ways: morally careful, politically careful . . . careful not to be so zealously secular that you become even more fanatical than the religious fanatics you fear.
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