48/18
Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of trespassing on his best friend in elementary school. Norway’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film; 97th Academy Awards in the category 2025. Norwegian films usually have a low international standard, but here we have a film that manages to reach an extremely low Norwegian standard as well. It’s a truly rare achievement. The film mostly looks like it was made by first-year film school students. These students set out to make an experimental film that was different from 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 hooked until the end, using some cliffhangers or other cinematic techniques. This film has none of those. It’s just extremely bad. Plus, it’s arguably the cheapest film ever made. The expenses are limited to the actors, camera, lighting, and sound crew, and no one is technically challenged in any scene. If you’re strong enough to hold a camera and a microphone, you can make this movie. The movie takes place entirely in the hallways and rooms of the school. They didn’t even bother with sets. This is a school, a county-run school, and they probably borrowed it for free. The actors don’t do exactly bad work. But it’s hard for actors to perform exactly bad—it takes an extremely bad director to make actors look bad. So, strictly speaking, it’s not the actors’ fault that the movie is terrible. However, since they agreed to take on the roles, their performance in Armands will be part of their cinematic record. It’s impossible to give the movie a 0, but if it were, it would deserve a 0 simply because it doesn’t deserve a 1. By the way, this is Norway’s contribution this year. Oscars. 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 there have been quite a few bad Norwegian films made this year, but Armands 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 internationally significant actors. By comparison, Sweden and Denmark have dozens, even. This film, with its trip to the US and Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, demonstrates to the entire film industry that Norway is, for many practical purposes, a nation without a functioning film industry.