Something has happened between six-year-old Armand and his schoolmate Jon. The parents are called to the school for a meeting—including a chilly Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World) as Armand’s mother, a famous actress. But what actually happened? Was it just a children’s game or something much more serious? Who should we believe? And what exactly is the nature of the relationship between the parents? Armand is a work of misdirection that has a strange elemental power, with unforgettable sequences and a delicious sense of menace. It takes the logical next step beyond, say, Anatomy of a Fall, and adds a dose of surrealism, letting the fabric of reality come undone. Just when you think Armand has painted itself into a corner, and that the ratcheting debate at the center of the film has reached an impasse, the floor drops out and it mutates into something else entirely. First-time writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, grandson of Liv Ullman and Ingmar Bergman, won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes (Best First Film) for this slippery and maddening film, an essential work of post-truth cinema, where objective facts are debatable, consequences are negotiable, and the combatant most adept at mind games wins. ~OO