Review: Everything Must Go
by Olivia Popp
- Arild Østin Ommundsen’s newest film follows three siblings navigating unresolved childhood conflicts and emergent personal crises as they clean out their late father's home

An elderly man draws his last breath and falls face-first onto a piano keyboard; in front of him lies a page of sheet music with several sparse measures and a cryptic quote scrawled in German. Despite its murder mystery-esque opening, Everything Must Go by Norwegian filmmaker Arild Østin Ommundsen unfolds instead as a family dramedy among his three adult children, who must clear his belongings and prepare his house for sale while navigating preexisting tensions that resurface. It world-premiered as the opening film of the 35th Tromsø International Film Festival, receiving a packed series of encore screenings over the course of the gathering. Østin Ommundsen, who collaborated on the screenplay with his spouse and professional partner, Silje Salomonsen, may be seen as a familiar name to local audiences, having also begun in the Arctic city with his debut feature, Mongoland (2001), nearly 25 years ago.
The man's adult children include the responsible but strict divorcée Ellen (Salomonsen), who quickly herds her two younger brothers into living in and cleaning out his house together. Go-with-the-flow Amund (Tomas Alf Larsen) and introspective professional composer who takes after his father Carl Olav (Torbjørn Berglund Eriksen, a stage/television actor and composer in his first film role as the brooding pianist) don't understand why Ellen is so resistant to their mother Elisabeth’s (Liv Bernhoft Osa) meddling. Despite having no right to any inheritance, as she divorced their father years ago for another man, she schemes to collect her ex-husband’s treasured grand piano that allegedly belonged to Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt – the film’s running joke.
With its jam-packed production design, it's easy to pass over the fact that Everything Must Go is, impressively, nearly a chamber piece, with most scenes happening in the vibrantly decorated home and at select places outside in the neighbourhood. The “cleanup” of this very set design leads to each sibling's pseudo-midlife crisis: Ellen struggles to connect with her pre-teen daughter Anna (Billie Østin), Carl Olav suffers a crisis of faith in his musical abilities, and the married Amund briefly attempts a reconnection with an ex-girlfriend from his teenage years.
The film’s running time could easily have been trimmed down by 15 or 20 minutes, as smaller conflicts frustratingly never amount to anything larger between the characters. Elisabeth, who initially shapes up into an antagonist, fades into the furniture until the work's resolving sequences. The dialogue further feels a bit contrived while leading up to punchlines, even though the best comedic gag is not even a spoken one at all, but an early-film scene where the siblings hide from their mother as she attempts to enter the home.
An interesting and playful sonic landscape is made possible by a diverse score courtesy of frequent Østin Ommundsen collaborator Thomas Dybdahl, which is the highlight of the film. He turns diegetic piano pieces into elements of the soundtrack, and incorporates genre shifts and sound effects to bring to life the compositions made as part of Carl Olav’s musical mentorship of Anna. It would be a natural extension to incorporate other forms of composition and musical symbolism into the film’s thematic throughlines, although Østin Ommundsen never quite takes this idea beyond the literal.
Tears were gently dabbed at, especially by local audiences, with the movie’s humour centred around relatable familial neuroses: bad cooking, sibling rivalries and weaponised incompetence. With dashes of jolly sentimentalism (eventually, we learn the significance of the father's page of sheet music), Everything Must Go is still guaranteed to appeal as a touching watch with one's parents or siblings, a perfectly acceptable crowd-pleaser that successfully leverages its relatability over any tough narrative choices.
Everything Must Go is a Norwegian production by Chezville AS. The film’s world sales are up for grabs.
Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.