An Inherited Self in Family Ruins

In the film Sen­ti­men­tal Val­ue by Joachim Tri­er, iden­ti­ty is shaped by grief, fam­i­ly mem­o­ry, and the sto­ries passed be­tween gen­er­a­tions. As old wounds re­turn through the fam­i­ly home and the father’s artis­tic am­bi­tions, the self ap­pears less cho­sen than in­her­it­ed, formed in­side emo­tion­al struc­tures that long out­live their ori­gin.