Cannes Grand Prix winner Sentimental Value explores family trauma through film-making

Sentimental Value (M18)

133 minutes, limited screenings from Jan 22
★★★★☆

Among the first Oscar-season films to arrive in Singapore is this, the winner of the top prize of the Grand Prix at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and Norway’s entry to the Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category.

Norwegian director and co-writer Joachim Trier reunites with actress Renate Reinsve to explore an idea covered in their previous film, the award-winning romantic comedy The Worst Person In The World (2021): adult dysfunction is rooted in an unhappy childhood, especially in the case of women with terrible fathers.

All this is explored through the lens of film-making. Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard), a writer-director in his sunset years, cajoles his actress daughter Nora (Reinsve) and many of his old contacts into taking part in one last hurrah – a semi-autobiographical film to be shot in the home his family has owned for generations.

After Nora turns him down, Gustav turns to the American star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning). Kemp’s star status guarantees studio funding. The film-within-a-film structure exposes the hypocrisies and strains within the Borg family, while poking fun at show business in the age of TikTok.

Reinsve and Skarsgard turn in brilliant performances respectively as the daughter appalled by a father dredging up buried trauma, and a dad trying to find redemption through art.

More screenings are expected from Jan 22, to be announced on the website of distributor Anticipate Pictures (

anticipatepictures.com/sentimental

).

Dark Winds

Netflix

Freshly added to Netflix in Singapore are the first three seasons of this acclaimed crime drama, originally shown on AMC Networks in the United States, starting in 2022.

Dubbed “desert noir” for its bleak tone, laconic characters and harsh, dry setting, the story follows Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten), officers with the tribal police operating in the Navajo Nation, a reservation for the Dine (Navajo) people.

Around them are colourful supporting characters, including pro-native freedom fighters, shamans, Christian missionaries and assassins.

Set in 1971, the story in the first season kicks off with brutal murders that are connected to the dismal history of forced resettlement in the US. The cops discover that greedy outsiders are still trying to extract wealth from reservation land using every method, including murder.

In subsequent seasons, Joe investigates new crimes while battling demons stemming from his morally questionable choices. In this show, the walls separating reality from the hallucinatory and supernatural are thin.

Critics have praised McClarnon’s performance as the native police officer. Entertainment site Paste Magazine says the cinematography “captures the beauty and bleakness of the Southwest, and proves that the monsters that haunt us the most are unseen”.

Fallout 2

Prime Video
★★★★☆

Along with HBO’s The Last Of Us (2023 to present), Fallout has become a show based on a video game recognised for its solid production values, writing and acting performances.

The show’s first season (2024) provided action and suspense while staying true to the game’s mechanics and dry humour. The second season premiered on Dec 17, 2025, just a year after the first, a rare treat at a time when breaks of two or more years have become the norm.

The naive, good-hearted former vault dweller Lucy (Ella Purnell) has now teamed up with the cruel, radiation-blighted mutant, The Ghoul (Walton Goggins). Both cross the Mojave desert towards New Vegas to find her father, former vault leader Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), now revealed as a villain.

She seeks emotional closure while The Ghoul wants payback for Hank’s role in triggering the nuclear apocalypse that turned him into a freak.

The survival drama set up in the first season continues, with Lucy and The Ghoul struggling with the strange creatures and even stranger human cultures that have evolved since civilisation was destroyed.

There has been no drop in quality in the new season – the writing is taut and the dystopian setting still looks properly dystopian.