PRODUCTION SENTIMENTAL VALUE
For Sentimental Value , he also utilised an ARRIFLEX 435 for a few slow-motion shots, as well as additional Super Baltars, ZEISS Super Speeds, Cooke’s Varotal Zoom 20-100mm T3.1 for the film’s historical sequences, and an Angénieux 24-290mm T2.8 for its present-day zoom shots. While making The Worst Person in The World , Tuxen fell in love with shooting film. “Apart from the actual look, I also really love grain and how it depicts colour,” he says. “Joachim likes to depict faces as naturally as possible. This is my second feature with the actor Renate and one of her qualities is that she blushes a lot and her eyes redden. This sensitivity in emotion catches those colours really differently. If we had shot this film digitally, it would have been so hard to get the colour palette we did. Rolling film is also expensive, so we had to be quiet and focused and everybody had to perform.” Despite looking to a number of French, Italian and Scandinavian films, Trier and Tuxen did not want to spend lots of time exploring references for the main part of the film’s story. They did, however, look at getting inspiration for Gustav’s fictional film Anna , shown in the retrospective screening scene. “We had to be Gustav Borg as a filmmaker, both in the present and past,” says Tuxen. So, Tuxen thought about which film directors Gustav himself might’ve been inspired by, and what his hypothetical
World War II movie in the nineties would have looked like. “I remember how everybody was using bleach bypass in World War II movies in the nineties,” he says. “So, we skipped the bleach and kept the silver in the negative for sequences from Anna . “Joachim and I decided that mise-en- scène and dolly work were more Gustav’s style, while for the contemporary story of the sisters we chose a more handheld- driven, intimate and real approach.” HISTORICAL HOME At the centre of the film is the Borg’s Dragestil family home, which has been passed down several generations. We see the house’s evolution over decades. The same house also featured in Trier’s 2011 film Oslo, August 31st . “Joachim knew that key scenes had to work within the space and the sequence of rooms. It needed to have the vibe of a house with a history of sadness and it needed to tick a lot of boxes.” A replica was constructed by the production designer Jørgen Stangebye Larsen and his team due to the required blue screen. In the final sequence, the replica features in full display. “We shot the oner sequence in November 2024, around 13 months after we rediscovered the house,” says Tuxen. “The day before shooting the oner scene, my grip and I spent the entire day getting from A to B
to C to D, hitting all the points and finding out the best way to operate. I don’t think we ever had to stop a take because the camera movement wasn’t right. We delivered on all takes. It was hard, but we prepped enough so that it would be a wonderful thing to shoot.” Tuxen enjoyed the process of capturing a number of different time periods in the film. “Maybe I am slightly romanticising the time of standing in the war zone and trying to realise it, but I just remember it as fun,” he says. “The house is nearly as old as the film medium itself. The story is about a filmmaker, so we wanted each era of the house to reflect the state of film technology as it evolved over time. We started with scratchy, old, b&w lenses shot on 16mm to give it a little more texture, and then we tried to follow what lenses were mainly used in each subsequent decade to give it a slight historical perspective from our camera.” Even though Tuxen favoured handheld camera movement for the present-day sequences, it rarely feels chaotic. “The theatre stage freight sequence is really the only exception to that,” adds Tuxen. “I felt like we were breathing slowly when we were shooting this film. Joachim really buys himself time to prep and time to shoot. I was also joined by his editor Olivier Bugge Coutté, who I’ve known longer than I’ve known Joachim.” LANGUAGE OF LIGHT The overall shoot lasted 63 days, with production wrapping in November 2024. It included a short stint in Deauville, WE PREPPED ENOUGH SO THAT IT WOULD BE a wonderful thing to shoot ”
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