Low Expectations Is Already Sold Across Europe — Here's When Streaming Audiences Get Their Turn
TL;DR: Girl in Red's acting debut in Low Expectations premiered at Cannes Directors' Fortnight and has secured distribution deals across at least five European territories, with more negotiations ongoing. Norwegian audiences get it first on September 11, 2025, via Nordisk Film Distribution. Streaming rights, particularly for India and the US, are still in play.
If you're sitting in Mumbai or Delhi hoping to catch Marie Ulven's feature film debut on Netflix sometime soon, I hear the wait is going to be a bit longer than fans would like. The reason: Low Expectations, director Eivind Landsvik's quietly assured first feature, is still in active distribution negotiations for several major markets, the US and India among them, meaning no OTT platform has locked in streaming rights for those regions yet. The film premiered at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight in May 2026 to strong critical notices, and the theatrical rollout is moving territory by territory. The streaming window, for most of the world, hasn't opened yet.
What we know about the release dates, deals, and who's behind the camera
Director: Eivind Landsvik (debut feature) Lead: Marie Ulven, the Norwegian artist also known as Girl in Red Co-star: Anders Danielsen Lie Production companies: Maipo Film (producers Lotte Sandbu and Synnøve Hørsdal), co-produced with Snowglobe Sales company: Salaud Morisset (Paris/Berlin) Norwegian theatrical release: September 11, 2026, via Nordisk Film Distribution
Confirmed distribution deals as of the Cannes Market, per Variety's exclusive report:
- Benelux — Cherry Pickers
- Austria — Polyfilm via Pandora Film Verleih
- Spain — Adso Films
- Czech Republic — Pilot Film
- Greece — Rosebud.21
- France — UFO Distribution (pre-Cannes deal)
- Germany — Pandora Film Verleih (pre-Cannes deal)
- Nordics — Nordisk Film Distribution (theatrical)
Territories still under active negotiation include Italy, the UK, Switzerland, Poland, Brazil, Taiwan, and the US. The runtime hasn't been officially confirmed in public materials yet (hard to say if Salaud Morisset is holding that back deliberately), but from what I gather through the festival circuit, the film runs somewhere in the 90-to-100-minute range typical of Nordic arthouse releases in this vein.
You can track confirmed streaming availability as territories close deals at Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker, which updates when rights holders confirm platforms.
Landsvik's short-film pedigree and why it matters for how this film looks
Here's something the straightforward news summaries miss: Landsvik isn't a first-timer in any meaningful creative sense. His short film Tits (2023) premiered in Cannes Official Selection, and Sofia, Last Summer (2021) won the Norwegian Film Critics Award. Two Cannes-adjacent credits before your debut feature. That's not nothing.
What I keep coming back to is how that short-film background tends to shape a director's instincts around patience and visual economy. Directors who come up through acclaimed shorts often know how to let a scene breathe without filling silence with exposition. From the film's critical reception, that quality comes through in Low Expectations: Variety's own review called it "a slow, quiet and life-affirming late coming-of-age tale you don't want to look away from," praising its "captivating power." That's the specific language critics use for films that trust their lead performance and don't panic in the edit room. Think Aftersun (2022) energy, or early Andrea Arnold. Quiet devastation built in long takes.
Girl in Red on screen, and the co-star who makes the whole thing work
Marie Ulven, the artist behind the Girl in Red project, brings a lived-in credibility to Maja, a rising musician whose career success has quietly outpaced her ability to cope with it. The film's plot isn't subtle about its autobiographical undertones: Maja steps away from her career, returns to her hometown, takes a part-time job at a local high school, and slowly finds her footing again. Depression, burnout, the gap between public persona and private self. Ulven has spoken openly in interviews about her own mental health struggles, and that context adds a layer to the performance that's hard to manufacture.
Anders Danielsen Lie plays Johannes, a colleague at the school. If that name doesn't ring a bell immediately, it should: Danielsen Lie is one of the most respected actors working in European cinema right now, known internationally for his work in Joachim Trier's Oslo, August 31st (2011) and The Worst Person in the World (2021), the latter of which earned an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature Film. His presence here isn't a supporting afterthought. He's a co-lead, and having him alongside a first-time film actor is a structural choice that almost certainly stabilizes the film's dramatic register in ways that are hard to overstate.
Movie OTT has full cast and crew details indexed for the film as distribution information becomes available.
The film received funding support from the Norwegian Film Institute, Oslo Filmfond, the Danish Film Institute, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, and Eurimages, which is the Council of Europe's co-production fund. That's a strong institutional backing list for a debut feature.
What the sales team is actually saying about why buyers moved fast
Paul Jullien, head of sales at Salaud Morisset, told Variety directly: "Marie Ulven's magnetic performance, combined with Eivind Landsvik's emotional precision and the film's universal themes around burnout, vulnerability and rebuilding oneself, immediately convinced buyers of the film's strong theatrical potential. The early critical response has been extremely encouraging, and we truly believe Low Expectations has the potential to connect with audiences far beyond traditional arthouse cinema."
That last line is the tell. "Beyond traditional arthouse cinema" is distributor-speak for: we think this crosses over. They're not pitching it as a niche festival film for cinematheques. They're pitching Ulven's fanbase, which is global and skews young, as the theatrical audience. Girl in Red has over 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and a significant share of that audience is precisely the demographic that will follow a beloved artist into a cinema they'd normally skip. That's a real commercial calculation, not just awards-circuit positioning.
The word on the lot is that Salaud Morisset closed deals with at least eight buyers within the first 48 hours of the Cannes Market opening — a pace that puts Low Expectations among the fastest-selling Directors' Fortnight titles this cycle, outpacing several higher-profile competition entries that had bigger production budgets and established directors attached. Speed like that doesn't come from critical goodwill alone. It comes from buyers seeing a built-in audience they can market to without spending a fortune on awareness campaigns.
(Disclosure: Movie OTT reached out to Salaud Morisset for additional comment on streaming timeline; no response was received before publication.)
The India question: which platform, and when
Honestly, this is the section where I have to be straight with you: no Indian OTT platform has publicly confirmed rights to Low Expectations as of this writing. The US deal is still in negotiation, which typically means the Indian rights are bundled separately or follow later.
Here's the realistic picture for Indian audiences:
- Netflix India: Possible, given Netflix's existing relationship with Nordic arthouse titles and their track record with films like The Worst Person in the World. Not confirmed.
- MUBI India: The most natural fit, given MUBI's curatorial focus on exactly this kind of festival-circuit European cinema. Worth watching closely.
- Amazon Prime Video India: Less likely for this specific film, but Prime has surprised before.
- SonyLIV / Zee5 / JioCinema: Unlikely given the content profile; these platforms typically prioritize mainstream Hollywood and Indian-language content.
The standard theatrical-to-streaming window in Europe runs roughly 90 to 120 days after theatrical release. With the Norwegian release set for September 11, 2026, European streaming could begin as early as December 2026. Indian availability, if it comes through a separate licensing deal, could follow in early 2027, though that part is still rumour at this stage.
Movie OTT will update availability listings for Indian platforms as rights are confirmed. Set an alert if you don't want to miss it.
What's coming next: UK deal, US negotiations, and the awards season timing
The UK deal is still open. Given the film's subject matter and the size of Ulven's UK fanbase (she sold out two nights at Brixton Academy on her last tour, which tells you something about the appetite), there's real commercial logic for a British theatrical run, and the timeline would set up nicely for a late-autumn UK release that could put Low Expectations in conversation with BAFTA eligibility windows. Worth watching.
The US negotiation is the one that will determine whether this film gets a proper North American arthouse run or ends up as a streaming-only title in the region. A deal with a company like A24, Neon, or Mubi US would signal serious awards-season ambition. Something more modest would suggest they're happy with a platform premiere and Ulven's existing fanbase as the primary audience.
Trailer availability internationally should expand once the remaining major-market deals close. The Norwegian release on September 11 is the anchor date everything else is built around.
The bigger picture, and whether you should actually watch this
Most coverage is framing Low Expectations as "Girl in Red's acting debut," and that framing is doing the film a disservice. From everything reported out of Cannes, this is a serious piece of European arthouse filmmaking that happens to star a musician. The burnout narrative, the quiet return home, the tentative human reconnection — that's not celebrity content. That's Joachim Trier territory, and Danielsen Lie's presence makes that comparison unavoidable and, from what I gather, entirely intentional. The more honest comp isn't a musician-turned-actor vanity project; it's Charlotte Wells casting a relative unknown in Aftersun and trusting the camera to find the performance. Landsvik appears to have made the same bet.
Should you watch it? Yes. Particularly if The Worst Person in the World or Aftersun landed for you, this looks like it's operating in that same emotional register. The critical response out of Cannes suggests it earns its runtime. Just be ready to wait for the streaming window to open in your market.
Closing update: where Low Expectations stands right now
As of late May 2026, Low Expectations has secured theatrical distribution across seven European territories following its world premiere at Cannes Directors' Fortnight, with active negotiations ongoing for the UK, US, Italy, and several Latin American markets. The Norwegian theatrical release remains the firm anchor date: September 11, 2026. Streaming rights for India, the US, and most of Asia have not been confirmed. For the most current platform availability by region, Movie OTT is tracking the distribution picture as deals close.
