In my work with couples, I usually have a session with each partner separately. During this individual meeting, I explore the client’s past relationship history focusing mostly on their childhood relationships to parents, siblings and other attachment figures. It is staggering how many individuals in troubled adult relationships have family trauma in their past.
In this regard I would like to call attention to a recent movie entitled Sentimental Value. This foreign language movie has already won a Golden Globe award for lead actor Stellan Skarsgard and is nominated for several awards in the upcoming 2026 Academy Awards.
This brilliant film tells the story of Gustav, a formerly successful Norwegian film director in the waning years of his career. He is self-involved, drinks too much and seems to lack EQ. Gustav returns home to Oslo in hopes of casting his oldest daughter, Nora, in his new autobiographical movie. The family has a history of inter-generational trauma stemming from the director’s mother being tortured by the Nazis in World War II. For reasons unknown, she commits suicide when he is five. Gustav hopes that Nora will play the part of her grandmother (his mother) in his film.
Gustav is estranged from his two daughters due to his decision to move away from Norway after he and the girls’ mother divorced. His new film is sympathetic to Nora’s plight as an “abandoned” daughter. When she turns down his offer to star in the movie, however, he turns to an American actress played by Elle Fanning to play the role.
As a family and couple therapist, the film is a treasure trove of material that relates to important family and couple therapy dynamics.
- High Conflict Parents: In a flashback scene, we see Gustav’s daughters covering their ears to block out the sound of their parents’ incessant fighting. High levels of spousal conflict has a devastating impact on children, often leading to anxiety and depression in adulthood. We see these traits in Nora who has a mood disorder and massive bouts of stage fright as a stage actress. In one powerful scene, she is in the midst of a full blown panic attack before going on stage and is soothed by the play’s director instructing her to take deep breaths. In general, individuals who grow up in high conflict households tend to either avoid conflict or escalate conflict in their adult relationships. They need to learn how to engage in productive conflict and that healthy conflict is “contact.”
- Protective Factors: When Nora asks her sister why she is less “fucked up” than she given that they grew up in the same household, Agness responds that it was because she had Nora, her older sister, to take care of her when her parents could not. This “truth” echoes the work of Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller who argues that children in emotionally volatile and abusive households are shielded from the worst impacts of that trauma by having a sympathetic sibling or adult in their lives.
- Abandonment Issues: The daughters, and in particular Nora, hold smouldering resentments at their father for abandoning them when they are young. Although not always a choice, many parents choose career, infidelity or substance abuse over family life creating life long abandonment issues in their offspring. One of the main outgrowths from such childhood experiences is a fear of commitment. Case in point; in contrast to her sister Agness who is less angry at her father, Nora is single and only gets involved with married men.
- Creative Healing: The suicide of his mother when Gustav was five has a devastating impact on him. Suicide – whether it be that of a parent, child or sibling – is a life-long wound for survivors. Just as his mother “abandoned” him through her suicide, he, in turn, abandons his children by leaving Norway after his divorce from his wife Sissel. By making a film that focuses on his mother’s decision to take her life, Gustav is choosing a creative outlet for healing his own wounds. By casting his daughter in the film to play her grandmother, he is also using a creative outlet to re-connect with her.
Some takeaways from the film are:
- The power of creativity. Whether it be film making, poetry, songwriting, painting etc. finding ways to turn trauma into art is a very effective way of healing, creating something beautiful out of emotional pain.
- The need for adults to find constructive ways of dealing with conflict. Research shows that chronic parental conflict is destructive to children’s mental well-being. However, it has been found to be healthy for children to see parents disagree as long as they also see their parents repair after an argument. This teaches children that you can still love someone with whom you argue.
- It is never too late to heal family wounds. It takes a lot of work and willingness from all parties to be effective. Such healing may require the intervention of a skilled family therapist. The ending of Sentimental Value points toward the healing that has taken place between Gustav and Nora as a consequence of their working together and airing their differences.
- Panic attacks are best healed with deep breathing. If someone you love is having an out of control panic attack, staying calm and projecting a grounded presence is the best intervention. Physical movement is also a powerful way to calm anxiety.
Sentimental Value is brilliantly acted, written, directed and shot. It is one of my favorites of 2025! I highly recommend it!