Sebastian Stan reflects on Romania roots and U.S. politics at Cannes

Sebastian Stan turned his Cannes appearance into a meditation on where he came from and what that origin means in today’s United States. The Romanian-born actor said his role in Fjord gave him a chance to reconnect with Romania after leaving it in what he called a very chaotic way, while also drawing a line from family history to the political strain now facing artists and media figures in America.

Fjord premiered in the Cannes Competition on May 18 and drew a 12-minute standing ovation, the longest at the festival so far in 2026. The film, directed by Cristian Mungiu, places Stan in the story of a religious Romanian family that moves to a Norwegian village, where clashes over child-rearing and social values escalate into a wider conflict. Festival coverage said the plot turns even darker when authorities remove the family’s children amid abuse allegations, pushing the drama from private tension into a custody battle with ideological stakes.

The project carries added weight because Mungiu returned to Cannes Competition nearly two decades after winning the Palme d’Or in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a film that made him the first Romanian filmmaker to win the prize. Fjord is also described as his first foreign-language film, a shift that makes its Romania-to-Norway migration story feel especially pointed. Stan said he was drawn to the material because it let him engage with identity, displacement and the shadow of the hardship and repression that shaped his upbringing.

That personal thread was hard to separate from the politics Stan raised when journalists asked how his view of Donald Trump had changed since he portrayed the president in The Apprentice. Stan linked the film’s pressures to the climate facing Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert under Trump’s second term and said, “America is in a really, really bad place.” His comments framed Fjord not just as a performance but as a public statement about censorship, cultural anxiety and the fragility of free expression.

Stan’s own biography helps explain why the film resonated so strongly. He was born in Constanța, Romania, on August 13, 1982, and moved with his mother to Vienna when he was eight before eventually settling in the United States. That path gives Fjord’s portrait of migration and reinvention an added layer of meaning: for Stan, the film was both a homecoming and a reminder that questions of heritage and belonging remain politically charged in America’s current climate.