Could ‘Sentimental Value,’ Joachim Trier's Cannes Standout, Be the Next ‘Anora’?

I’m not the first to say that the infamous standing ovations at the Cannes Film Festival are meaningless. This year’s lackluster iteration is no different: movies ranging from good (Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest) to great (Die My Love, starring an excellent Jennifer Lawrence) to downright disappointing (ahem, Eddington and History of Sound) were all met with polite rounds of applause that landed in the five-minute range. At this point, those warm receptions are customary. So when Joachim Trier’s open-hearted family drama Sentimental Value racks up a 19-minute standing ovation—the third longest in Cannes history behind Pan’s Labyrinth and Fahrenheit 9/11—you can’t help but take notice. My hands are stinging just thinking about it.

But it’s well deserved. The Norwegian director’s follow-up to The Worst Person in the World (also a Cannes darling) is an endlessly moving observation of a fractured family attempting to make amends. Worst Person breakout Renate Reinsve returns as Nora, a stage actress so plagued with stage fright that she asks her co-star to slap the nerves out of her. After her mother passes, her absent father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgãrd) re-enters her life with a script in hand, hoping to cast his daughter as the lead in his long-awaited next feature. Cinema becomes the path to forgiveness and reconciliation, and Trier approaches their relationship with such incredible empathy that the film never feels saccharine. There are no villains, only wounded artists looking to heal the only way they know how.

After its premiere last night, Sentimental Value immediately skyrocketed to frontrunner status for the coveted Palme d’Or. Rightly so—this is one of the worryingly few movies in competition to garner universal acclaim. That same passion reverberated across the Croisette when Anora debuted at Cannes, which continued that momentum to win Best Picture at the Oscars. (Funnily enough, Anora premiered exactly one year before Sentimental Value.) And it certainly helps that the film has statistics on its side: its US distributor Neon has released every Palme d’Or winner since fellow Best Picture victor Parasite in 2019.

At an unprecedented time when Cannes, the holy center of arthouse cinema, has miraculously become an Oscar prognosticator, you can’t help but look at Sentimental Value as a serious contender. The Worst Person in the World just about got there: Reinsve picked up the Best Actress award at Cannes, while the film itself landed Academy Award nominations in International Feature and Original Screenplay but went home empty. But Sentimental Value has the potential to go all the way. Skarsgård is long overdue for recognition, and Reinsve is equally deserving after she was unfairly snubbed for delivering one of the greatest performances of the decade in The Worst Person in the World.

Is the Anora blueprint possible for Sentimental Value? It may well be. Oscar voters are impossible to predict, but they could appreciate Trier’s tasteful restraint compared to the more frenetic and whimsical Worst Person. The bigger names could appeal too. Reinsve has become a star in her own right, and she’s joined by industry legend Skarsgård and a career-best Elle Fanning as the American actress who replaces Nora in Gustav’s film. Sentimental Value doesn’t need the awards to make the case that this is undoubtedly one of the year’s best films, but it’s more than worthy as a contender.

This story originally appeared in British GQ.