Sentimental Value, honored with 9 academy award nominations including Best Picture, is the winner of our vote for the February film. The film is not showing in theaters, but it is available for digital download, and Beth Balkite has volunteered to host our movie club in the Reel Room at Overture, located at 7770 Farr St on Daniel Island.
You are invited to join us at 3:30 pm on Saturday, February 7th*. Bring your own snacks! After the movie, those who wish will go for dinner to Agaves Cantina, located at 885 Island Park Dr on Daniel Island.
This will be a private (unlicensed) screening, so it will not be posted to Meetup. Please email shl@lowcountryhumanists.org to RSVP so we know who to expect.
*Note that we postponed the original screening from Sunday, February 1st to Saturday February 7th, and changed the time to 3:30 pm.
The Reel Room is on the second floor, and the stairs are right next to where we had the Solstice Party. Elevators are at the end of the corridors. It is a fantastic space to watch a movie. For directions to Overture see https://lowcountryhumanists.org/directions-to-overture/
Sentimental Value is a Norwegian family drama about two adult sisters, Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), who are forced to confront the return of their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a once-celebrated film director who largely abandoned them to pursue his career. After their mother’s death, Gustav comes back to Oslo intending to reclaim the old family house and mount a deeply personal comeback film.
The film is a restrained, intimate drama about memory, inheritance, and the emotional residue people leave behind. A fractured family, forced back into close proximity after a death, must face old grievances, unspoken regrets, and unresolved affections that surface during the sorting of the family home. Small gestures and seemingly mundane objects take on outsized meaning, revealing how sentiment can both bind and burden those who remain.
The film is dialogue-driven and observational in tone, relying on subtle performances rather than plot mechanics. Approximately 75–85% of the dialogue is in Norwegian, with limited use of other languages, reinforcing its sense of place and cultural specificity.
The nine Academy Awards nominations are as follows:
- Best Picture – Maria Ekerhovd & Andrea Berentsen Ottmar
- Best Director – Joachim Trier
- Best Actress – Renate Reinsve
- Best Supporting Actress – Elle Fanning
- Best Supporting Actress – Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas
- Best Supporting Actor – Stellan Skarsgård
- Best Original Screenplay – Joachim Trier & Eskil Vogt
- Best Film Editing – Olivier Bugge Coutté
- Best International Feature Film – entry from Norway