The Romanian director Cristian Mungiu specializes in naturalistic dramas whose low-key aesthetic choices—long takes, few close-ups, no use of extradiegetic music—leave it to the viewer to navigate the dense ethical thickets his films set out to explore. Mungiu’s movies often depict people in harrowing circumstances, while maintaining a respectful distance from the drama. Though he’s fascinated by ideological extremes, his own point of view as a filmmaker is intentionally hard to pin down.
Mungiu’s latest film, Fjord, won this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes—Mungiu’s second time taking the festival’s top prize, after the brilliant abortion-themed drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days in 2007. Like that film (which would easily make my Top 10 list for the 21st century to date), Fjord takes on a hot-button issue while going out of its way not to guide the audience’s hand toward any specific button. Fjord may not have the harrowing power of the director’s very best work, but it’s an exacting study of a contemporary social issue that’s rigorous without being clinical.
This time around the subject, loosely inspired by real-life events, is the clash of cultural values that can emerge in the wake of immigration. The Gheorghiu family has recently relocated from Bucharest, Romania, to a remote village in northern Norway. Mihai (Sebastian Stan) is Romanian, while his wife Lisbet (Renate Reinsve) is Norwegian-born. They’re returning to her hometown so that her mother can help care for the couple’s five children, who range in age from mid-teens to infancy.
The Gheorghius are Christian fundamentalists whose lives are organized around their faith. Though we never learn exactly what religious sect they belong to, it’s established early on that Mihai and Lisbet are strict but loving parents whose children are forbidden to use the internet, play video games, or dance. As the film opens, their oldest child, teenage Elia (Vanessa Ceban) is apologizing to her father for some infraction she’s committed, the nature of which the audience is never shown. “You need to learn to admit when you’re wrong,” he tells her sternly as she gives him a tearful hug. That will prove to be a tough assignment for every character in this movie, child or adult, especially since, as the viewer is soon to find out, the question of who exactly is in the wrong gets increasingly harder to resolve.
The Gheorghius enroll their children in the local public school, a seemingly welcoming and progressive institution whose principal is their friendly next-door neighbor Mats (Markus Scarth Tønseth). Mats’ rebellious teen daughter Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen) takes a shine—possibly a romantic one—to the pious Elia and persuades her and her younger brother Emmanuel (Jonathan Ciprian Breazu) to sneak out of their house for stealthy late-night joyrides on her family’s motorboat.
The family seems to be settling well into their secular but close-knit new community, until the school gym teacher notices some bruises on Elia’s back during wrestling class. It’s never clear that these are the results of parental abuse—earlier on we witness a shoving match between Elia and Noora’s jealous ex-best friend, and the gym class itself seems rough enough to have potentially caused the marks. But Norwegian laws about child abuse are strict enough that within days a representative from the state child welfare office (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) has ordered the placement of not just Elia but all of the Gheorghiu children, including the still-breastfeeding baby, into three different foster homes while the parents’ child-rearing practices are investigated.
This setup is established less than an hour into Fjord’s two-and-a-half-hour run time; with pacing that’s deliberate but never drags, Mungiu’s patient camera (the cinematographer is Tudor Vladimir Panduru) observes the repercussions of these events, both within the Gheorghiu family and throughout the broader community. Eventually that scope will expand to include the global religious right, as the outraged Mihai begins to attract a large social-media following protesting what he perceives to be faith-based persecution. During a civil hearing to assess their parental fitness, Mihai and Lisbet are cross-examined not only about their attitudes toward spanking as a form of parental discipline—a practice Mihai defends as a part of his traditional culture—but about their refusal to give their children cellphones and their insistence on daily prayer. Even as you start to believe it’s true that the couple’s conservative beliefs might be harmful to their kids’ development, you find yourself taking their side against the officious child-welfare bureaucrats who seem convinced that a single interview with two confused teenagers—both of whom say that they love their parents and want to return home—constitutes evidence enough to make all five Gheorghiu children wards of the state and possibly put their parents in prison.
Sebastian Stan may be most familiar to your average American moviegoer as Captain America’s sidekick–turned–Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes (a role he will be reprising in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday), but he has since made his name as a serious and ambitious actor, delivering a performance of great comic brio as Tommy Lee in the miniseries Pam & Tommy and bringing an unexpected pathos to the thankless role of a young Donald Trump in 2024’s The Apprentice, a role that earned him his first Oscar nomination. Stan spent the first eight years of his life in Romania and subsequently grew up around an extended family of Romanian-speaking immigrants; without knowing the language, I can only say that he switches with utter believability between that language, which Mihai speaks to his family, and the Romanian-accented English he uses to communicate with his Norwegian neighbors. Stan’s resolutely unglamorous performance as Mihai, a soft-spoken but steel-willed man with huge reserves of pride and occasional flashes of frightening anger, is what gives the film its fascinatingly unstable center of gravity, and it’s not hard to see why he might be on his way to nomination No. 2.
As for Renate Reinsve, while she doesn’t disappear physically into her role as completely as Stan does into his—she’s still recognizable as the gorgeous, willowy star of The Worst Person in the World and Sentimental Value—Lisbet is a very different character from the kind we’re used to seeing Reinsve play, not a spiky individualist but a devout and dutiful wife and mother. Her big scene, a sit-down with child-welfare authorities during which she gradually comprehends that her whole world is about to be ripped apart, is a master class in acting as reacting, and may very well earn her a second Oscar nod as well.
Mungiu’s script economically establishes that, though the Gheorghius’ marriage operates by more or less traditional gender roles, the couple’s bond to each other and to their children is genuine and deep. In the film’s most affecting scene, the camera observes Mihai from behind as he looks out the window at his wife in their driveway, buckling their infant son into his car seat as he’s about to be taken away by a worker for child protective services. Neither the father’s nor the mother’s face is visible during this long take; it’s only through their body language (his rigid stance, her slumping shoulders) that we see how wrenching the moment is for them both.
Fjord is less concerned with reconciling the tension between secular and faith-based value systems than with making the audience sit with the fact that even the most nominally progressive modern democracies are constructed around what may be an unbridgeable gulf. Like the beautiful but threatening snowdrifts that cover the mountains around the village—avalanches are frequent enough that the school has a fire drill–like protocol for hustling the kids indoors when the snow starts to slide—the social order Mungiu shows us appears constantly on the verge of collapse. In the film’s final shot, the sacred and the profane seem to converge in an image of quasi-supernatural beauty. You’ll come out of the movie wondering what the filmmaker was asking you to believe about that closing image, and suspecting that his real goal all along was just to keep you asking.

There have been many quiet Mondays at the Burbank offices of Warner Bros. Pictures, usually following a bomb like the one the studio just suffered with Tom Cruise’s “Digger.” The cryptic eco-disaster project will represent a loss of hundreds of millions when all is said and done.
But the silence this past Monday was compounded by a familiar wave of merger-induced grief, multiple sources told Variety, especially as employees observed WB Motion Picture Group co-head Pamela Abdy packing up her office in boxes. In a move that shocked some, Abdy and co-head Michael De Luca were dismissed last week as David Ellison finally homed in on his acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. De Luca and Abdy had been at the head of Warner’s film business for four years, delivering a wild series of strikes (“A Minecraft Movie”) and gutters (“The Bride!”). In addition to family photos and movie props, Abdy may have boxed up the remnants of a workplace tradition diluted by acquisitions and corporate unions over the past three decades.
Warner Bros. Pictures is poised to undergo its most dramatic cultural transformation since the 1980s under the new leadership of Skydance CEO Ellison — and specifically, his motion picture group co-chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein. The Ellison regime has revealed itself thus far as a shirtsleeve operation, one zeroed in on lowering costs and boosting profits. The preciousness and luxuries that made Warner Bros. a desirable home for creatives will be rightsized with tech ruthlessness, multiple high-level sources suggest.
Goldberg and Greenstein had only spent a year (albeit a productive one) as the heads of Paramount Pictures before this week’s announcement that they will preside over all film labels at the combined company. This means that De Luca and Abdy’s replacement will report into Goldberg and Greenstein, not the office of the CEO (as was the case under David Zaslav’s Discovery and John Stankey’s AT&T, for example).
“On the film side, the scale of this combination, particularly its commitment to theatrical, puts Dana and Josh at the center of the movie business,” Richard Weitz, co-chairman of WME Group, says. The power agent is alluding to Ellison’s commitment to release 30 theatrical films per year across both studios, an agreement he had to put in writing to get his merger over the finish line.
Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, who served as a top WB film executive from 1989 to 2002 before moving to Paramount to produce huge IP like “Transformers,” says the Skydance team’s dedication to movies is not just on paper.
“Looking at the two companies and their slates, I don’t think they have done 30 movies between the two in a very long time,” he says. “That is a net plus for our business, because that means more movies are getting made and more capital is being expended in creating them.”
Goldberg and Greenstein are respected by industry peers, hailing from Village Roadshow (“The Matrix,” “Ocean’s Eleven” series) and Sony Pictures, respectively. They’re now faced with the daunting task of further defining distinct identities for multiple WB labels like New Line and Clockwork.
“I worked with Josh for more than a decade, and I have a great deal of respect for him,” says Tom Rothman, Sony Pictures chief and Greenstein’s former boss. “What you need in that job is a combination of IQ and EQ. It’s managing capital allocation, but in a much more important sense, it’s managing artistic temperaments. He’s extremely capable in both regards.”
While detractors of Goldberg and Greenstein say they do not enjoy the kind of profile some competitors do on the byways of Los Angeles and in coastal elite circles, they’ve greenlit 20 films since taking office at Paramount. They’ve also signed talent deals with the Duffer Brothers, Will Smith, James Mangold, Jon M. Chu and Issa Rae (on top of a distribution pact with Legendary Entertainment).
Any successful film executive’s job comes down to superior talent relations and responsible budgeting. De Luca and Abdy certainly had the former covered (De Luca was a groomsman in Paul Thomas Anderson’s wedding; Abdy was considered a whisperer to filmmakers like Alejandro Iñárritu). “Irresponsible” spending is likely what helped them court the premium filmmakers for which Warner Bros. is renowned, one source says. “It’s easy to say yes when you don’t care what the price is,” they add.
With some $80 billion in debt on the Skydance balance sheet, carte blanche is over. But it’s not just about fiscal prudence. Unlike “carpetbaggers” Zaslav and Stankey, as another top industry player calls them, Ellison and his team consider themselves obsessed lovers of film. The pomp and “platinum” aura of Warner Bros., as one former WB exec phrases it, may be sacrificed quickly.
The lingering magic (and occasional arrogance) of Warner Bros. were holdovers from a culture built by Bob Daly and Terry Semel, insiders say. They ran the company as co-CEOs for almost two decades starting in 1980. The pair prioritized elevated popcorn hits made by substantial filmmakers. Clint Eastwood and Christopher Nolan kept bungalows on the WB lot without having overall deals. “They just wanted to be there,” one former employee says.
While the TV group at WB often was peeved that it brought in all the revenue while the film group got all the attention, the pecking order remained. A collection of Warner vets, many now in high-ranking posts elsewhere, describe a kind of “heart pull” that the studio inspires in its graduates. A crowded text chain of former employees called the “Gate 4 Club” (referring to the entrance many used to access the lot) is active across the industry. They wistfully discuss the days of Daly and Semel parking a row of brand-new Range Rovers as gifts to the cast and filmmakers of “Lethal Weapon” after a sequel hit big.
It’s doubtful any shiny SUVs will be wrapped in ribbons at Warner Bros. anytime soon. Besides, Ellison prefers the sky.

“Pretty Little Liars” actor Keegan Allen was mugged in the parking lot of a West Hollywood grocery store by two masked men who beat him up and stole his watch, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Friday.
In the aftermath of the Thursday evening attack, Allen posted video of himself with blood on his face and his left arm.
“I was just, I was just robbed of my watch outside of Laurel Supply,” the rattled actor can be heard saying. “Can you call the police?”
Allen, who is 37, also gave his account of what happened.
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Actor Keegan Allen describes violent mugging incident
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“But these two dudes hit me in the head and pointed a gun at me with, with a knife, and then took off,” Allen said in the footage. “I ah — They had masks on.”
“Took my watch, though,” he added. “Damn it! “
Allen, according to investigators, had just returned to his vehicle from the upscale grocery store on Santa Monica Boulevard when he was confronted by two men.
“One suspect pointed a silver handgun at the victim while the other pointed a knife and demanded the victim’s watch and bracelet,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement. “Shortly after, the victim was struck in the face with the handgun. The suspects obtained the victim’s watch and fled the scene in an unknown vehicle.”
Allen “sustained a laceration to his forehead” but was not hospitalized, the department said, adding that they are “actively investigating this incident” and additional patrols will sent to the area.
In the caption to his Instagram post, Allen wrote, “West Hollywood is not safe anymore.”
“Robbed at gunpoint and knifepoint by two young men that threatened to KILL me over my watch and would have! God said no tonight. My life for a watch,” he wrote.
He then called out Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, writing, “Let’s hope all these flock cameras … everyone thinks will stop crime can find these very dangerous criminals.”
The city of West Hollywood released a statement in response to the incident, insisting it is “a compassionate and engaged community.”
“The City wants community members to know that community concerns are heard and taken seriously, and that public safety remains the City’s top priority,” the statement said.

Given that New York Comic Con hosts a regional qualifier for the Cosplay Central Crown Championships every year, it’s no surprise that cosplayers bring their A-game to the convention. Marvel characters got plenty of love (as always), but we also saw a beautifully detailed Qifrey from Witch Hat Atelier, Firion from Final Fantasy II (in his Dissidia costume, for an extra deep cut), and even a gorgeous take on Krampus. Here’s the best cosplay we saw at New York Comic Con 2026 day one.
Want more io9 news? Check out the best movies and TV shows to stream this month and all the upcoming sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books that should be on your radar.

Avatar: Seven Havens has been renewed for two more seasons at Paramount+.
The news was revealed during Friday’s New York Comic-Con panel to coincide with the release of Book 1, confirming that the story of Avatar Pavi and her twin sister Nisha will continue through Books 3 and 4.
Avatar: The Last Airbender co-creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko were on hand at the Javits Center to make the announcement, along with fellow Avatar: Seven Havens executive producer Ethan Spaulding and co-executive producer Sehaj Sethi. They were joined by the voices of Pavi, Nisha and Jae: Saheli Khan, Aishu Devan and Major Curda.
The panel, which was moderated by the original voice of Korra, Janet Varney, also gave the audience a peak at the making of the series and a special script-to-screen clip. The latter is embedded below.
Set in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the animated sequel series centers around a young Earthbender who discovers she’s the new Avatar, after Korra from Legends of Korra, in a world shattered by a devastating cataclysm.
Avatar: Seven Havens debuted October 9 with the first three episodes of Book 1. Those will be followed by episodes four through six on Friday, October 16, episodes seven through nine on Friday, October 23, and episodes 10 through 13 on Friday, October 30.
More details on Books 2, 3 and 4 will follow at a later date.
Meanwhile, Avatar Kuruk: Wave of Chaos follows a rebellious teenage Avatar, who bucks thousands of years of tradition by choosing to learn the four elements through globetrotting adventures, staying one step ahead of his angry teacher, rowdy pirates, and chaotic spirits – all while helping the world in his own unique ways.
The series is produced by Avatar Studios and Nickelodeon Animation Studios with co-creator Bryan Konietzko serving as showrunner.