Palme d’Or-winning auteur Cristian Mungiu is making his English-language film debut with Neon. Mungiu’s upcoming family drama “Fjord” starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve has landed at the powerhouse indie distributor ahead of Cannes.
“Fjord” follows the Gheorghiu family, comprised of a Romanian father (Stan) and a Norwegian mother (Reinsve), as they settle into new life in a remote Norwegian village, where the mother was born. The film’s official synopsis reads: “They quickly bond with the Halbergs, who live in the neighboring house near the bay and despite their very different upbringings, the children of both families soon become close friends. When the Gheorghius are suspected of disturbing behavior, their lives are thrown into chaos as they become the center of small town scrutiny.”
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Stan and Reinsve previously starred in Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man” together; this is their second feature playing a couple onscreen. Production for “Fjord” has wrapped in Norway.
Goodfellas is handling worldwide sales on the film with Neon acquiring rights for the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. Neon will release the film theatrically in the U.S. nationwide. The deal was negotiated by Sarah Colvin for Neon and Eva Diederix for Goodfellas.
“Fjord” is a truly international feature, and is billed as being a Norway-Sweden-Denmark-Finland-France-Romania coproduction. The film is produced by Mobra Films, Eye-Eye Pictures, Why Not Productions and Goodfellas, alongside Snowglobe, Aamu Film Company, Garage Film, FilmGate Films and Film i Vast (supported by Eurimages and Creative Europe MEDIA).
“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” director Mungiu already has one Palme d’Or to his name, and he’s joining forces with a shingle with some big Cannes wins under its belt. The distributor has distributed the last five Palme d’Or winners out of Cannes, including Sean Baker’s Best Picture winner “Anora” in 2024.
This year, the studio will debut Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” also starring Reinsve, and Julia Ducournau’s “Alpha.” Their other titles inclue Raoul Peck’s “Orwell: 2+2=5” and Michael Angelo Covino’s “Splitsville,” starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona which Neon also produced.
Stan previously told IndieWire that working with Mungiu was an incredible experience in his filmography. “With all of these smaller indies, I always feel even while I’m on the plane going there, I’m always worried, ‘Is the financing going to come through?’ It’s on its way,” Stan said. “He’s been up there with me for a few years with filmmakers from Romania where I’ve been calling him trying to find a way to work with him, where I can speak Romanian as well. We finally found this story, which is about a Romanian family who’s moved to Norway and then ends up in this very complicated trial. There’s a system [that] investigates cases if there’s ever been physical abuse in the household between the parents or the kids. They go investigating the family for an incident, and it leads to this trial. It happened before the pandemic, and it became national news. There were a lot of religious communities that came to their side, and it’s really interesting and quite complicated.”
