This is a truly rare feat
Line of Events
Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing the line against his best friend in elementary school. Norway’s official submission for the “Best International Feature Film” category of the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. Norwegian films usually have a low international rating, but here we have a film that also manages to reach an exceptionally low Norwegian rating. The film mostly looks like it was made by first-year film school students. These students decided to create an experimental film like nothing we’ve ever seen before, and they succeeded.
It’s just exceptionally bad
However, they forgot a few things. Among other things, they forgot that even bad films usually have some tricks in the script to keep the audience engaged until the end – cliffhangers or other cinematic techniques. This film has none of that. Plus, it’s without a doubt the cheapest film ever made. The expenses are limited to the actors, camera, lighting and sound crew, and in no scene is anyone technically challenged.
They didn’t even bother to provide sets
If you are strong enough to hold a camera and a microphone, you could make this movie. The movie takes place entirely in the hallways and rooms of a school. It’s a school, a municipal school, and they probably borrowed it for free. The actors don’t do a bad job directly. But it’s hard for actors to act really bad – it takes an exceptionally bad director to make actors look bad.
Incidentally, this is Norway’s contribution to this year’s Oscars
So, strictly speaking, it’s not the actors’ fault that the movie is bad. However, since they agreed to play the parts, it will be part of their film credits that they played in the film Armand. It is not possible to give the film a score of 0, but if it did, it would deserve a 0 simply because it does not deserve a 1. The Norwegian Oscar committee decided that this film was the best Norwegian film of the year. How they came to this conclusion is a mystery, considering that many bad Norwegian films have been made this year, but Armand is the worst.
In comparison, Sweden and Denmark have dozens
There are many bad Norwegian films to choose from, much better than this one. For those who do not know, Norway does not have any internationally renowned actors. This film, with its trip to the United States and its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, demonstrates to the entire film industry that Norway, for many practical purposes, is a nation without a functioning film environment.