Film archive, 2025

The Love That Remains

Ástin Sem Eftir Er

Director Hlynur PÁLMASON

1Festival entries

★Avg. rating

Even when a relationship ends, traces remain everywhere. The Love That Remains is a surreal drama that collages such moments, when those remnants of the past relentlessly overwhelm the present. Magnus, a herring fisherman, shares custody of his three children while living apart from Anna, the wife he once loved. Yet he still struggles daily with his longing for her. Anna, meanwhile, dreams of artistic breakthrough, but finds Magnus’s drifting presence both a source of support and a burden. Set against the stunning rural landscapes of Iceland, life may appear serene on the surface, yet it is filled with invisible cracks. In his fourth feature film, director Hlynur Pálmason, much like in his previous work Godland (2022), weaves layers of metaphor into the natural world. The fragmented and loosely connected traces of memory cross the boundaries between separation and intimacy, reality and fantasy, adding to the confusion, yet the film never loses its warmth from beginning to end.