The Love That Remains Director Hlynur Pálmason on His Poignant Icelandic Family Drama
February 5, 2026
On the latest episode of FLC Luminaries, our video series that spotlights talent at all levels of the filmmaking process who uplift the art and craft of cinema, The Love That Remains director Hlynur Pálmason discusses his poignant Icelandic family drama. An NYFF63 selection, The Love That Remains is now playing at Film at Lincoln Center. 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.