39/27
Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing the line with his best friend in elementary school. Norway’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. Norwegian films, as a rule, have a low international standard, but here we have a film that also manages to reach an exceptionally low Norwegian standard. This is a rare achievement indeed. The film basically looks like it was made by first-year film school students. These students set out to create an experimental film unlike anything seen before, and they succeeded. However, they forgot a few things. Among other things, they forgot that even bad films usually have some tricks in the script to keep the audience’s attention until the end: some cliffhanger or other cinematic techniques. There is none of that in this film. It is simply exceptionally bad. Furthermore, this is undoubtedly the cheapest film ever made. The costs are limited to the actors, the camera, the lighting and sound crew, and no one has to deal with technical difficulties in any wall. If you are strong enough to hold a camera and a microphone, you can make this film. The action of the film takes place exclusively in the corridors and rooms of the school. They did not even bother with the decorations. It is a school, a county-run school, and most likely they borrowed it for free. The actors do not directly act badly. But it is difficult for actors to act really badly: it takes an extremely bad director to make the actors look bad. So, strictly speaking, it is not the actors’ fault that the film is terrible. However, since they accepted these roles, their appearance in the film “Armand” will become part of their film curriculum. It is impossible to give the film a score of 0, but if it were possible it would deserve 0 simply because it does not deserve 1. By the way, this is Norway’s contribution to this year’s Oscars. The Norwegian Oscar Committee has decided that this is the best film made in Norway this year. How they came to this conclusion remains a mystery, considering that there have been quite a few bad Norwegian films made this year, but “Armand” is the worst. There are plenty of bad Norwegian films to choose from that are much better than this one. For those who don’t know, Norway has no major international actors. For comparison, there are even dozens in Sweden and Denmark. This film, which was shown in the US and nominated for an Oscar in the “Best Foreign Language Film” category, clearly demonstrates to the entire film industry that Norway, for many practical reasons, is a country without a functioning film environment.