This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Forgoso. Welcome to the show.

Today, in honor of Oscar Sunday, my conversation with writer-director Joachim Trir.

We sat last fall around his latest film, Sentimental Value, when it opened in theaters.

Since then, the film has earned nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best International Feature Film.

If you haven't seen it, the movie centers on a Norwegian filmmaker, played by Stellin Scarsgard, who attempts to reconnect with his two

estranged daughters after the death of their mother, his ex-wife. Although the attempt is a little

selfishly motivated, Borg, who's the director that Scarscar plays, hasn't made a new film

in decades, and has a promising script he's ready to direct. And so, he offers the lead role

of the film to his daughter, Nora, played by Renata Rinesvei. She also came on her show last fall.

Renata plays Nora, a working actor in Oslo, and when she rejects her father's offer,

boardcast an American movie star played by L. Fanning to take her part.

Trir, too, comes from a pretty prodigious filmmaking family.

His grandfather was a celebrated director, his mother made documentaries, and his father worked

as a sound designer. He grew up in a way like a Norwegian Spike Jones, a skater-turned-fielmaker who channeled the kinetic energy of the former into the latter. And through six features with his longtime co-writer Esquil Vote, beginning with Reprise in 2006, he's built the body of work

often featuring young people trying to connect and make sense of their past. And so today,

we have a very meta-conversation about making movies, the years between the worst person in the

world and this new picture, his evolving relationship to work-life

balance, and his longtime collaboration with actor Renata Rines Faye. Speaking of, if you have not

listened to our episode with Renata, it was a really fantastic piece. I think it came out at the

end of November last year. It was kind of a two-part series with Joachim and her.

I think both of them work back-to-back as kind of like an A-side, B-side.

So if you have now seen the film since we released those episodes,

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