Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason has proven uniquely adept at capturing seemingly small moments and making them feel truly grandiose. While his last effort, “Godland,” took it to extreme, wonderful ends, his latest film limits the scope to a single family.
in “The love that remains,” Pálmason follows a family through a complex period of change. The filmmaker’s own children (Ída, Grímur and Þorgils) play the offspring of Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) and her fiance, the adorable Magnús (often shortened to Maggi, and played by Sverrir Guðnason) as they navigate a slow-paced breakup to first hint at the film’s breakup. but in an exciting and often oddly funny spirit, as if we’re watching on a nature video about a nuclear family.
In our review from this year’s Canneswrote critic David Katz, “Pálmason is a demanding image-maker, giving us crystalline natural panoramas that distribute their beauty carefully, yet his scripts are deliberately more fragmented, often to their detriment. In ‘Godland’ and his Cannes Critics’ Week calling card ‘A White, White Day,’ this fragmented sense of hypnotic bleeding into different trajectories; fragments to tell a time-honored tale of lost love, but the impeccability of the construction does not help us feeling it as visceral as he wants.”
The film world premiered in the non-competitive Cannes premiere section in May. Its outstanding canine star, the sheepdog Panda, eventually won the Palm Dog at the festival. The film’s (human) actors include Saga Garðarsdóttir (“Woman at War”), Sverrir Gudnason (“Borg vs. McEnroe”), Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir (“Godland”), Þorgils Hlynsson (“The Nest”) and Grímur Hlynsson (“The Nest”).
“The Love That Remains” was selected in August as Iceland’s entry for the Best International Feature Film category for the 98th Academy Awards. Pálmason’s previous film, “Godland”, premiered at Cannes Un Certain Regard 2022 and went on to be nominated as Iceland’s candidate for the 2023 Academy Awards. Although it did not make the final nomination cut, the film was critically loved, including here on IndieWire.
Janus Films will release “The Love That Remains” in theaters on Friday, January 30, 2026. Check out its first trailer below.
