22/40
Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing borders against his best friend at elementary school. Norway’s official submission to the ‘Best International Feature Film’ category of the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. Norwegian films usually have a low international level, but here we have a film that also manages to reach an exceptionally low Norwegian level. It’s a really rare achievement. The film seems to have been made mostly by first-year students at a film school. These students decided 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 viewers interested until the end: some cliffhangers or other cinematic techniques. This film has none of that. It’s just exceptionally bad. Plus, it’s easily the cheapest film ever made. The expenses are limited to actors, camera, lighting and sound equipment, and in no scene does anyone have any technical problems. If you are strong enough to hold a camera and a microphone, you could make this movie. The movie takes place entirely in the hallways and rooms of a school. They didn’t even bother to make the sets. This is a school, a county-run school, and they most likely borrowed it for free. The actors don’t do a bad job directly. But it’s hard for actors to act completely badly – it takes an exceptionally bad director to make actors look bad. So, strictly speaking, it’s not the actors who act. The fault is that the movie is terrible. However, since they agreed to take on the roles, it will be part of their film history that they appeared in the movie Armand. It’s not possible to give the movie a score of 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 to this year’s Oscar. 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 quite a few bad films made in Norway 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 actors of international importance. By comparison, Sweden and Denmark have even many dozens. This film, with its trip to the United States and its nomination for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, proves to the entire film industry that Norway is, for many practical purposes, a nation without a functioning film environment.