26/47
Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing boundaries with his best friend in elementary school. Official submission of Norway for the “Best International Feature Film” category of the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. Norwegian films in general are of a low international standard, but here we have a film that also manages to achieve an exceptionally low Norwegian standard. It’s a truly rare feat. For the most part, the film looks like it was made by first-year film students. These students decided to make an experimental film that had never been seen before, and they succeeded. However, they forgot a few things. Among other things, they forgot that even bad films usually have a few tricks in the script to keep the viewer hooked until the end — some cliffhanger or other cinematic techniques. This film has none of those. It’s just exceptionally bad. Also, it’s undoubtedly the cheapest film ever made. The costs 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 microphone, you could shoot this film. The film takes place entirely in hallways and rooms of a school. They didn’t even bother with sets. This is a school, a county-run school, and most likely they borrowed them for free. The actors don’t do a really bad job. However, it’s hard for actors to give completely bad performances — it takes an exceptionally bad director to make actors look bad. So, strictly speaking, it’s not the actors’ fault that the film is terrible. However, since they agreed to take the roles, it will be part of their cinematic record that they appeared in the film Armand. It’s not possible to give the film a score of 0, but if it were, it would have deserved a 0 simply because it doesn’t deserve a 1. Incidentally, this is Norway’s entry to this year’s 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 some bad Norwegian films made this year, but «Armand» is the worst. There are many bad Norwegian films that are far better than this one. For those who don’t know, Norway has no internationally significant actors. In fact, Sweden and Denmark have many dozens by comparison. This film, with its trip to the US and Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, shows the entire film industry that Norway is in many ways a nation without a functioning film environment.