Dogmatic Scandinavian Liberals vs. Eastern Family Values: Fjord's Clash-Cultural Drama Touches Nerves in Norway and Romania

Cannes winner Christian Mungeau's news story of a Romanian couple whose children were taken by the Norwegian government. Heading into the London Film Festival, two writers explain how film exposes real-life hypocrisies When Christian Mongiou's Fjord opened to a one-day preview in Romania this June, it was well received. In 53 cities and 96 cinemas, according to reports, this film has more than

"On paper, both countries agree that it is illegal to beat your child," Romanian journalist Andrej Popoviciou said.

When Christian Mungeau's Fjord premiered in Romania this June as a one-day preview, it was met with overwhelming response. In 53 cities and 96 cinemas, the film reportedly attracted more than 40,000 viewers in one night, a number rarely seen in art cinemas in Romania. But the answer here had little to do with cinema. Instead it felt like the reopening of a familiar fault line about conflicting values ​​within the EU itself.

The film echoes the events of 2015, when the five children of Marius and Ruth Bodenario, a Romanian Pentecostal couple living in Norway - part of a Neo-Protestant minority long viewed with suspicion in Orthodox Romania - were removed from their home by Barnornet, Norway's child welfare authority, amid criminal and possible religious retribution concerns.

The fallout in Romania continued for months, with diplomatic friction, public demonstrations and constant media coverage. The children were eventually returned and Bodnarius later settled in Romania. Mungiu doesn't tell the story to the beat, but Romanian viewers had no trouble figuring out where it came from.

What divided viewers here was what the film did with a well-known story. Some have called it "dangerously confusing," raising questions about abuse, integration, and belief without taking a clear stance. Others argue that its position lies in the form, in how the sympathies are distributed, which characters are internal, and which are reduced to performance.

For some, this is a brave critique of dogmatic liberalism, while for others it blurs the clear moral line on corporal punishment while spreading too much heat to religious conservatism. At most, the debate boils down to a broader anxiety about whether the EU can sustain its contradictions.

That tension resurfaced a few weeks later, when a viral video of a Romanian mother abusing her daughter in public reignited the same divide online (many defended her as exercising necessary discipline, others outright condemned her), suggesting that attitudes here may be changing, but unevenly.

It's worth noting how small the legal gap between the two countries really is, because the film's reception is seen as a gap. Romania criminalized corporal punishment in 2004 and Norway in 1987. On paper, both already agree that it is illegal to spank your child, but the real difference is between law and belief.

A UN human rights body recently noted that despite the ban, Romania still needs to change the mindset of parents who believe corporal punishment is better than the alternative. Meanwhile, the Orthodox Church has never fully abandoned a folk theology in which strict discipline breeds righteous children, even though doctrines and canons increasingly say otherwise.

What is remarkable is that there is little agreement on what the film actually affirms. Some say the supporting characters—social workers, lawyers, neighbors—are too thin to carry the moral weight required of them. Others accuse Mongeo of stacking the deck and warming the Christian-conservative family while leaving Norwegian institutions cold and procedural.

Mongeau has spoken of challenging "left-wing fundamentalism," a phrase that conservatives have used as justification, though he has equally condemned its right-wing counterpart. Advocates argue that a director who is sympathetic to victims should be as willing to defend a conservative minority in a progressive society as he is a progressive minority surrounded by conservatives, since majorities of any discipline tend to need the "other" to demonize.

Some critics have said that intent doesn't matter when a movie reaches an audience, so Mongeau's point in refusing to pick a side almost defaults to sympathizing with the family.

My feeling is that Fjord is a film about whether a system convinced of its good intentions can imagine wrong. It is the same reflection found in churches, homes and government offices from Oslo to Bucharest and throughout the polarized world we live in – the assurance that one's side only needs vindication, not correction.

Norwegian writer Magnus Nome: Norway sees itself as a country that takes children's rights more seriously than others.

The opposite side of Norway's often-lauded "trust society" can be revealed as a naïve belief in the wisdom of its institutions, but there are long discussions about Barnevernet, the child protection service: a flawed system of fallible human beings, who take advantage of the power to reach the inner sanctuary of the family.

Systemic mistakes have been made: the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Norway in several cases between 2018 and 2021. In a key case, the ECHR found the system violated by not prioritizing family reunification, and instead of attempting reunification with the biological mother, deemed primary residence permanent from the outset. In another ruling against Barnornet, the court criticized the placement of a Muslim mother's son in an evangelical Christian family, despite the mother's request for her child to live in an environment that reflected her cultural and religious background.

The previous case led to a series of Norwegian Supreme Court rulings that mandated the goal of reunification, guaranteed a higher level of minimum contact for parents, and raised the threshold for forced adoption. This led to a revision of the country's child welfare law, which mandated active steps to preserve the child's cultural, religious, and linguistic identity during foster care. The fjord is an image of the system before these changes.

A serious public discussion of these issues is often difficult, in part because discussion of specific cases is inevitably based on one-sided information, as Barnevernet is strictly confidential. From the children involved, we only get the parent's version, which allows them to shape the public narrative and change the power dynamics. At the same time, it frees Barnnort from facing specific allegations of wrongdoing.

There has long been a deep vein of criticism against Barnornet that has been far-reaching and far-fetched. Social media groups include tens of thousands of angry members, more or less full-time activists (often with personal experience), and street protests in more than a dozen countries. This is a surprising amount of international fuss about the social services of a small country.

In activist circles, criticism often turns from principled concern to radical conspiracy theories: there are allegations of adoption for profit, organ harvesting and the organized sex trade of minors, and accusations of an ultra-liberal indoctrination project, or a government-sanctioned eugenics program. As a result, social workers have been harassed and threatened.

While wild conspiracy theories have recently been debunked by major newspaper VG, the scope of the dramatic stories goes far beyond the debunking of the documentary - especially when both foreign media with little local insight, and propaganda outlets like Russia's RT, are always happy to present "evidence" of liberal decadence from the West.

Such widespread misinformation (which is not limited to Norway) can sometimes automatically hinder necessary discussions with criticism. It is assumed that it originates from the crank. But most, including Barnornet himself, agree that ongoing debate about the system is necessary and healthy.

One can see the fjord and the issue it portrays as conservatism versus liberal leftism, powerless people versus an arrogant system, or the conflict between prioritizing the rights of parents over the rights of children.

Most parents, myself among them, insist that they know what's best for their children better than any arm of government—but some of these parents also know families with dangerously unfit parents who think exactly the same. Norway sees itself as a country that takes children's rights more seriously than others, aware that while action carries the risk of harm, passive inaction and automatic consent by parents can be just as damaging.

Adreh may not be entirely objective or tell a complete story, but it is a more nuanced work than Barnornet's previous film Mrs. Chatterjee v. Norway—a Bollywood thriller based on a mother's narrative. To balance the film with a sympathetic portrayal of the dilemmas faced by social workers, Pernell's award-winning drama TV series, in which the main character works at Barnevernet, is available on Netflix.

Fjord opens at the BFI London Film Festival on October 17th and in cinemas across the US from October 9th.