38/11
Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing the finish line with his best friend from elementary school. category of the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. Norwegian films usually maintain a low international standard, but here we have a film that manages to reach even an extremely low Norwegian standard. This is indeed a rare achievement. The film looks like it was shot by first-year film school students. These students decided to create an experimental film unlike anything we have seen before, and they succeeded. However, they forgot a few things. Among other things, they forgot that even bad films usually have some tricks in the script that keep the audience entertained until the end – cliffhangers or other cinematic techniques. This film has none of that. It is simply exceptionally bad. Plus, it is probably the cheapest film ever made. The expenses are limited to the actors, the camera, the lighting and sound crew, and no one is technically demanding in any scene. If you are strong enough to hold a camera and a microphone, you could make this movie. The entire movie takes place in the hallways and rooms of the school. They didn’t even bother with the lines. It’s a school, a county school, and they probably borrowed it for free. The actors don’t do a terrible job. But it’s hard for actors to play completely bad – it takes a very bad director to make actors look bad. So, strictly speaking, they’re not actors. except that the movie is horrible. However, since they agreed to take the roles, part of their credit will be their appearance in the film Armand. It is impossible to give the film a zero rating, but if it did, it would deserve a 0 simply because it does not deserve a 1. Besides, this is Norway’s entry for this year’s Oscars. The Norwegian Oscar committee decided that this is the best film made in Norway this year. How they came to this conclusion is a mystery since there have been quite a few bad Norwegian films this year, but Armand is the worst. There are many bad Norwegian films to choose from, much better than this one. For those who don’t know, Norway has no international actors. For comparison, Sweden and Denmark have dozens. This film, with its trip to the United States and its nomination for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, shows the entire film industry that Norway is, for many practical purposes, a nation without a functioning film environment.
