“NATO stands with you today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes,” declared Jens Stoltenberg during his visit to Kyiv in April 2023. NATO’s founding in 1949 was built around the principle of collective defence: an attack on one member is an attack on all. Yet the alliance’s cohesion has rarely been tested as severely as it has been since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. As the war dragged on, member states differed over the pace and scale of support for Kyiv, even as NATO publicly committed to sustaining its backing for Ukraine. Against this backdrop, Jens Stoltenberg, who had served as NATO Secretary General since 2014, was persuaded to remain in office for an additional year, becoming a central figure in the effort to hold the alliance together amid mounting geopolitical strain.
Directed by Tommy Gulliksen, Facing War is a Norwegian documentary that follows Stoltenberg through his final year as NATO Secretary General, with unusually close access to meetings, phone calls and state visits. The film observes his diplomatic balancing act in real time, as he manages the alliance’s support for Ukraine while navigating the different priorities of leaders such as Joe Biden, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Viktor Orbán. Its fly-on-the-wall approach favours restraint over spectacle, allowing the mechanics of alliance management, consensus-building and quiet persuasion to emerge naturally. Rather than presenting Stoltenberg simply as a political figure, Gulliksen offers a close study of the often-unseen work required to maintain multilateral institutions during a period of war.
The film opened CPH 2025 as its official opening film and went on to receive international attention for its rare access to the workings of NATO diplomacy. Critics praised its unusual glimpse into high-level negotiations and Stoltenberg’s diplomatic skills, although some found its portrayal of NATO and its secretary general somewhat admiring. Its greatest value lies in showing diplomacy not as a sequence of grand speeches and summits but as a continuous process of persuasion, compromise and alliance management. Facing War is a must-watch for anyone interested in NATO, the Ukraine war and the functioning of multilateral institutions under pressure.
