28/31
Arman, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing the line against his best friend in elementary school.. Norway’s official entry for the “Best International Feature Film” category at the 97th Academy Awards 2025. Norwegian films usually have a low international standard, but here we have a film that also manages to achieve an extremely low Norwegian standard. This is a rare achievement indeed. The film mostly looks like it was made by first-year film school students. These students decided to make an experimental film that has 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 audience engaged until the end – some cliffhangers or other cinematic techniques. This film has none of that. It’s just extremely bad. It’s also probably the cheapest film ever made. The costs are limited to actors, camera, lighting and sound, and no one is technically challenged in any scene. If you’re strong enough to hold a camera and a microphone, you can make this movie. The movie takes place entirely in the hallways and rooms of the school. They didn’t even bother with sets. It’s a school, a county school, and they probably got it for free. The actors don’t do a bad job outright. But it’s hard for actors to act completely bad – it takes an extremely bad director to make actors look bad. So, strictly speaking, they’re not actors, it’s a shame the movie is terrible. However, since they agreed to take on the roles, their cinematography will include being in the movie Armand. It’s impossible to give the movie a 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 Oscars. The Norwegian Oscar committee decided that this was the best film made in Norway this year. How they came to this conclusion is a mystery, considering there were a lot of bad Norwegian films made this year, but Arman is the worst. You can choose from a lot of bad Norwegian films that are much better than this one. For those who don’t know, Norway has no internationally significant actors. By comparison, Sweden and Denmark have dozens. This film, with its trip to the US and its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, shows the entire film industry that Norway is, for many practical reasons, a nation without a functioning film environment.