This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 63rd New York Film Festival with director Hlynur Pálmason as he discusses the NYFF63 selection The Love That Remains.

This conversation was moderated by NYFF programmer Justin Chang.

The Love That Remains opens this Thursday, January 29 with in-person Q&As and screenings of Pálmason‘s companion film Joan of Arc at select showtimes. Get tickets!

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. A Janus Films release.

The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.