Like Ingmar Bergman pivoting from the existential weight of THE SEVENTH SEAL to the gentler, more reflective tone of WILD STRAWBERRIES, Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason follows his critically acclaimed 2023 film GODLAND with THE LOVE THAT REMAINS—a film that feels light and airy even as it engages with emotionally serious subject matter.
THE LOVE THAT REMAINS centers on Anna and Maggi the parents of three children, as they navigate an amicable separation and divorce. Anna is an artist struggling with stalled success, while Maggi works aboard a commercial fishing boat, fully aware that long stretches at sea strain family life. Their unhappiness is evident, but Pálmason resists easy explanations. Instead, he presents a couple bound by mutual respect and lingering affection, making the film a striking counterpoint to traditional divorce dramas.
Alongside its intimate emotional focus, the film is a vivid portrait of the Icelandic landscape, with the countryside serving as both setting and emotional texture—beautiful, austere, and deeply expressive.
Defying easy categorization, THE LOVE THAT REMAINS is a quietly radical film about love, separation, and emotional endurance. We hope our conversation with Hlynur Pálmason inspires you to seek out the film when it opens at your local arthouse cinema.
To learn more about THE LOVE THAT REMAINS, watch INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, starting now…
Charting the gradual evolution of a family in the midst of an irreparable fracture, The Love That Remains is a poignant, crisply pointillistic domestic drama that observes life’s changes with humor and whimsy, set against the majestic, ever-shifting Icelandic landscape. Visual artist Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) and fisherman Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason) were teenage sweethearts but have recently grown apart, and Magnús has moved out of the house. As long as the newly estranged parents put on a good face, the children—and their adorable sheepdog Panda (who won the prestigious Palme Dog award at Cannes)—seem to take the split in stride.
Yet as Magnús becomes increasingly alienated from his domestic life, harsh reality can’t help but bubble to the surface. Hlynur Pálmason’s follow-up to his austere 19th-century drama Godland is a constantly surprising film with an immaculate sense of framing and pacing—and an evocative, dulcet piano score by Harry Hunt—dotted with idiosyncratic flights of fancy that never detract from the central emotional authenticity.
Opening in Theaters
THE LOVE THAT REMAINS is now playing in theaters.