29/13
It is a truly rare achievement
Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing borders against his best friend in elementary school. Norway’s official entry for the ‘Best International Feature Film’ category at the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. Norwegian films are generally of a low international standard, but here we have a film that also manages to achieve an exceptionally low Norwegian standard. The film seems to have been made mainly by first-year film school students. These students set out to create an experimental film unlike anything seen before, and they succeeded.
It is exceptionally bad
However, they forgot a few things. Among other things, they forgot that even bad films usually have some tricks in the script to keep viewers engaged until the end – some cliffhangers or other cinematic techniques. This film has none of these. Furthermore, it is without a doubt the cheapest film ever made. The expenses are limited to the actors, camera, lighting and sound crew, and in no scene is there anyone with technical difficulties.
They didn’t even bother with sets
If you are strong enough to hold a camera and a microphone, you can make this film. The film is set entirely in the hallways and classrooms of a school. This is a school, a county-run school, and they probably borrowed it for free. The actors don’t do a bad job outright. But it’s hard for actors to do a bad job – it takes an exceptionally bad director to make actors look bad.
Incidentally, this is Norway’s contribution to this year’s Oscars
So, strictly speaking, it’s not the actors’ fault that the film is terrible. However, since they agreed to take the roles, it will go down in the cinematic record that they appeared in the film Armand. You can’t give the film a 0, but if you could, it would deserve a 0 simply because it doesn’t deserve a 1. The Norwegian Oscar committee has decided that this is the best film made in Norway this year. How they came to this conclusion is a mystery, considering that there have been some bad Norwegian films made this year, but Armand is the worst.
In comparison, Sweden and Denmark have dozens
There are many bad Norwegian films to choose from that are much better than this one. For those who don’t know, Norway has no actors of international importance. This film, with its trip to the US and nomination for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, demonstrates to the entire film industry that Norway, for most practical purposes, is a nation without a functioning film scene.