The Worst Person In The World is the film about to be promoted to the top of your pre-Oscars “to watch” list – and for good reason. 

Hailed as Norway’s answer to Fleabag, it’s clearing up at awards season – lead actor Renate Reinsve won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her starring role, while the film has been awarded for two Academy Awards (Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film) at the upcoming Oscars. 

With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 96%, we can gauge that it’s going to be a hit with audiences when it lands in the UK later this month (more on that later). It’s also been praised by Richard Curtis, who called it “a complete masterpiece” in a recent interview with Neon, the film’s distributor. And yes, there’s a 70% chance anyone you watch it with will make the terrible joke, “Oh look, they made a film about you…!”. But don’t let that deter you.

Plot

So what’s it about? The Worst Person In The World is a dark, romantic “dramedy” (that’s drama-comedy) about a 29-year-old medical student, Julie, based in Oslo, who’s turning the big 3-0, and having a quarter– well, third – life crisis in the process, questioning her romantic and professional situation. Oh, we’ve been there.

It’s set over four years of Julie’s life, and chronicles how her sense of existential crisis leads to her breaking up with her boyfriend, changing career course and just generally exploring her life options, all the while navigating her estrangement from her father.