Fjord is a movie about having your children taken by the state.
asserted
children → have → state
No violence is depicted on screen.
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violence → depict → screen
People rarely even raise their voices.
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People → raise → voices
Everything unfolds in the distant and impersonal style of bureaucratic procedure.
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Everything → unfold → procedure
But the movie, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is utterly enraging, a fierce, ferocious, gut-punch of a film.
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which → win → film
It's a haunting portrait of the consequences of unchecked state power, especially the kind that purports to be for one's own good.
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that → purport → good
Much of the film's power comes from the fact that it simply depicts what happens when a person, or a family, comes under suspicion by the state.
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person → come → state
Instead, writer-director Cristian Mungiu, a Romanian filmmaker whose sympathies are clearly with the family, simply shows us, unblinking, what it's like to lose one's rights and freedoms at the hands of a bureaucracy that respects no power and no authority but its own.
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that → show → own
When the film begins, the Gheorghiu family—a mother (Renate Reinsve), father (Sebastian Stan), and their five children—moves from Romania to a small town in Norway.
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family → begin → Norway
Soon, school authorities notice the children have bruises.
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children → notice → bruises
We in the audience know the bruises weren't caused by the parents, but the children, who don't speak Norwegian, give conflicting statements.
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who → know → statements
After being brought in for questioning by the police, the father admits to sometimes spanking or lightly slapping his children on the behind, for correction.
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father → bring → correction
In order to go free, he's required to sign a statement that contorts his words, making his admission of spanking sound like something more sinister and violent.
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admission → go → something
He's also a conservative Christian, which has caused some social tension: He's played Christian music, without singing the lyrics, on a piano at school, a no-no in a state that strictly curbs proselytizing.
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that → cause → proselytizing
School officials are concerned that he requires his children to pray and study the Bible; the children aren't allowed to play video games or watch YouTube.
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children → require → YouTube
One of his children spoke out against homosexuality in school during a session on gender.
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One → speak → gender
There's suspicion among the teachers and administrators that he might be indoctrinating his kids.
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he → be → kids
So the school authorities alert Child Protection, Norway's powerful family bureaucracy.
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authorities → alert → Protection
They remove the kids, including a breastfeeding baby, from their parents' custody and place them in three separate foster homes.
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They → remove → homes
At first the parents are allowed no visitation, and they are not told where the children are located.
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children → allow → visitation
Then they go to court, initially for a civil trial, but with a criminal trial for child abuse looming in the background.
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trial → go → background
As the legal process proceeds, they are told repeatedly that essentially anything they do to fight for their children will make the outcome worse.
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outcome → proceed → children
The state wants compliance and admission that they wrongly abused their kids.
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they → want → kids
But if they admit to abusing their kids, doesn't that give the state evidence they are unfit to parent?
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they → admit → evidence
Doesn't that make the criminal trial more likely to go against them?
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trial → make → them
As their own, mostly sympathetic lawyer, informs the two parents, "Frankly unless you convince them that you understand and regret it, the risk of you going to prison is considerable.
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you → inform → prison
Later, at the trial, a representative from Child Protection calmly says there's no reason to believe children might be better off with their biological parents, noting the family's restrictions on video games, internet, and YouTube.
uncertain
children → say → games
In their view, the state knows what's best for the kids; the culturally backward, religious conservative parents do not.
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parents → know → kids
It's not for nothing that one character, a conservative political figure from Romania who has come to help publicize the situation, analogizes the power of Child Protection to the power of the Soviet state.
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who → come → state
Part of what makes Fjord so effective is its lack of sermonizing.
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Fjord → make → sermonizing
You don't have to be a trad, a conservative, a family values evangelical, to see that what's happening to the Gheorghiu family is simply wrong.
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happening → have → family
They are railroaded by an imperious bureaucratic state that distorts reality to turn them into villains, with the goal of separating children from their parents and each other.
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that → railroad → parents
Fjord is based on the true story of the Bodnariu family, conservative Romanian immigrants whose five children were taken from them by the Norwegian state in the 2010s on similarly flimsy justifications.
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children → base → justifications
The family eventually left Norway.
asserted
family → leave → Norway
After watching Fjord, it isn't hard to see why.
asserted
it → watch → Fjord
The Aporia
