Charting a yr within the lifetime of a household because the dad and mom separate, Hlynur Pálmason’s “The Love That Stays” depicts the dissolution of a wedding with equal elements humor and poignancy, patiently and playfully assessing the evolving relationships between this troubled couple, their three youngsters, and their sheepdog towards the backdrop of gorgeous Icelandic landscapes.
As visible artist Anna, performed by Saga Garðarsdóttir, struggles to reclaim a way of that means in her inventive course of and household life after splitting up with fisherman Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason), Pálmason’s home drama parallels this artist’s journey along with her familial issues via a sequence of finely noticed, elegantly composed, and sometimes surrealistic vignettes.
Intimate and small-scale in comparison with “Godland,” his psychological epic a couple of Nineteenth-century Danish priest who travels the forbidding Icelandic panorama to construct a church, Pálmason’s fourth function (which Janus Movies will launch in U.S. theaters Jan. 30) finds sentiments each unusual and acquainted inside mundane actions and interludes, toying with wealthy themes of time, reminiscence, and humanity’s fleeting existence inside emotionless pure landscapes.
Like his earlier movies, Pálmason’s newest was made slowly and intuitively, over quite a few years, with no conventional script growth course of; the movie’s opening scene—depicting the demolition of a constructing, its roof being brusquely lifted off—was shot again in 2017, earlier than he made “Godland,” and the method of constructing the remaining concerned taking narrative threads that he shot individually in later years and weaving them collectively right into a extra cohesive story.
Pálmason, who began his profession in visible arts earlier than transitioning to filmmaking, lives and works between Iceland and Denmark along with his spouse and three youngsters. Although they’ve appeared in most of his movies, Pálmason’s youngsters have a lot bigger roles in “The Love That Stays,” enjoying the three siblings who deal with their dad and mom splitting up, at the same time as they amuse themselves by developing a knight-like determine and firing arrows at it. (Janus can also be set to launch “Joan of Arc,” a 62-minute movie conceived and produced in parallel with “The Love That Stays” that follows this narrative thread.)
“The Love That Stays” had its world premiere within the Cannes Premiere part of the 2025 Cannes Movie Pageant, the place its lead animal actor—Pálmason’s Icelandic sheepdog, Panda—additionally gained the Palm Canine award for greatest canine efficiency of the competition. Shortly thereafter, Janus Movies acquired all North American rights to “The Love That Stays,” persevering with their collaboration with Pálmason after “Godland.”
That earlier movie premiered in Un Sure Regard at Cannes and gained varied competition awards (together with the Chicago Worldwide Movie Pageant’s Gold Hugo for greatest function movie), en path to being shortlisted as Iceland’s submission for greatest worldwide function at that yr’s Oscars, although it was not finally nominated. “The Love That Stays” was additionally chosen because the Icelandic entry for greatest worldwide function at this yr’s Oscars, although it didn’t make the shortlist.
This previous July, Pálmason traveled to the Czech Republic to attend the Karlovy Differ Worldwide Movie Pageant, the place “The Love That Stays” was screened inside its Horizons part. Hours after the movie’s native premiere there, Pálmason and editor Julius Krebs Damsbo sat down to debate their long-standing collaboration, time as a cinematic medium, and being formed by one’s environment.
This interview, performed on the 59th Karlovy Differ Worldwide Movie Pageant, has been edited and condensed.
Your movies are all deeply targeted on exploring time, from the lengthy growth durations concerned with tasks like “Godland” and “The Love That Stays” to the intensive time-lapses you function to indicate time’s passage, each within the panorama and within the lives of your characters. Anna, performed by Saga Garðarsdóttir, is herself an artist whose work is time-based. When did time turn out to be such a throughline in your exploration of movie as a medium?
Hlynur Pálmason: Once we had been collectively in class, and after we did our first movie collectively, we had been exploring the medium and looking for our voice, attempting to determine what stimulates us in making movies. And with movie, the medium is time—you’ve gotten a sure period of time to seize a picture, or to permit a person or an viewers to expertise a sure feeling in response to it. We’ve got discovered that, slowly, and I grew to become obsessive about spending time at a specific place, filming it over the seasons, and utilizing that as a approach to spend time with a movie I used to be making.
Once we made “A White, White Day,” the opening of the movie was shot over a two-year interval, and all through that course of, I used to be additionally writing the movie. Generally, in the event you spend time with one thing, you possibly can dig deeper into that topic. I used to be simply looking for a approach to go deeper, and I discover that I do if I spend time with one thing.
That follow has developed, for me. With “The Love That Stays,” I had this robust feeling that point could be very valuable: how we spend it with our kids, with the folks we love, and with our work. Determining find out how to categorical that on movie was how I used to be working with time on this movie.
In some ways, you’re attempting to create recollections, however how are you going to categorical that on movie?
Julius, you’ve labored with Hlynur for over a decade, and your shared methodology of working—filming, writing, and rewriting materials, letting story and type evolve—should make for an enchanting editorial course of. What’s the method of modifying a movie made up of footage from such a large span of time? Is the modifying course of executed suddenly, or is it steady throughout all these years?
Julius Krebs Damsbo: It’s principally on the finish, however it additionally relies upon. Not less than whereas making “Godland,” we had been modifying a function movie and a brief movie concurrently. Throughout a break whereas modifying “Godland,” we edited a brief movie known as “Nest,” however we had been additionally not executed capturing “Nest,” so on the identical time, we did our final shoot for “Nest.”
We’ve had quite a lot of time with completely different materials from completely different movies, and this was a present. As soon as we had been executed modifying “Godland,” we premiered “Nest” the following week as a present to ourselves and a approach to have fun by watching one thing we had made straight away. Whereas we’re right here with “The Love That Stays,” we’ve additionally been modifying one other movie on the identical time, known as “Joan of Arc.” We at all times wish to lose ourselves within the work, as a result of now we have spent a very long time working collectively, and we at all times get pleasure from pushing ourselves.
HP: It’s about, “How do you wish to spend your time? How do you wish to work?” After I moved again to my hometown, I had this robust feeling that I needed to have extra of a studio life, like an artist, the place you shoot extra usually than each three years, the place you shoot each week. We determined early on to purchase a digicam and lenses.
Mainly, we’re engaged on a few tasks and capturing them concurrently, alternating between the scenes for every. Over the course of the yr, it’s not only one interval of capturing; this implies you’ve gotten extra time with every mission and might go from one to the opposite. It’s a physique of labor, not solely a singular work. It’s onerous financially, so it doesn’t work out each time, however we attempt to work that means.
With regard to your studio life, and with filming chronologically, the movies you’ve made are set towards this majestic panorama of Iceland. I’m inquisitive about your strategy to panorama, and the way you are feeling Icelandic historical past and tradition have knowledgeable the movies that you simply’ve made—both when it comes to the sorts of tales you’ve chosen to inform, or the best way these photographs come to you. Your movies really feel loosely structured, virtually improvisational, but so immaculately shot and exactly composed.
HP: That’s what we’re at all times going towards. We’re attempting to create one thing that feels very alive and intuitive. Whether or not it’s a written scene or a really planned-out scene, it has to really feel virtually prefer it’s occurring. There must be a pure circulation in the best way I converse, in the best way somebody speaks over me whereas I’m talking. We had been born in a sure place, right into a sure panorama, and that does coloration the best way you’re as a human being. It could be bizarre if I had been born the place I used to be born, then began making movies like someone who grew up in New York.
You might be formed by your environment, whether or not by panorama or cityscape. I’ve been attempting to determine find out how to inform tales that I do know, as a result of there are extraordinarily attention-grabbing topics on this planet that also really feel like they’re very removed from me. I’m studying a guide proper now, Bury My Coronary heart at Wounded Knee, that’s extraordinarily stunning however so unhappy, so horrible. I discover this complete world so attention-grabbing, however I don’t really feel like I’ve a say, proper? These are usually not my roots, and there are different folks to inform these tales.
While you’re working at residence in your personal environment, I really feel like, “That is my residence. That is what I can write about. That is what I can inform.” It’s very a lot about listening and watching, observing and being concerned about life, being within the folks round you and the issues which are happening, from mundane occurrences like somebody choosing mushrooms.
Generally it feels mundane, however a very powerful issues in life are those closest to us. What will we eat? Who will we spend time with, and the way will we create recollections with our kids? What’s our relationship with our siblings or our father? These are essentially the most essential particulars; they’re small, however they matter essentially the most. We typically discover ourselves working solely on the larger concepts, on politics, however I wish to write about what I do know and what’s round me.
You’ve famous the American photographer Sally Mann as an affect, who additionally labored near residence, creating portraiture of individuals in her speedy neighborhood. “The Love That Stays” is a household portrait, and a really private one, given the casting of your three youngsters. How does bringing your personal private life into a movie so immediately contribute to the creative course of?
HP: I don’t imagine “The Love That Stays” might have been my debut function, as a result of I wanted to be very comfy with the people who I work with. That takes time. Now that we’ve been working collectively on quite a lot of movies, it’s a really tight household, so it’s very simple for me to ask my youngsters into that. You turn out to be extra open, extra daring, and prepared to take an opportunity and do one thing very private. But it surely’s not a personal movie. I don’t really feel prefer it’s me being depicted, although it’s coming from a imaginative and prescient of mine.
JKD: Hlynur, you additionally come from a household that stays collectively, chooses one another, and stays a core household. That’s what you come from. I come from households that break up up. I come from that, with what’s happening in “The Love That Stays.” What the movie says and what it doesn’t say resonate with me very a lot. Some sentiments mentioned or left unsaid within the movie are ones I reside by, and others I select to not reside by. For me, there’s such unhappiness in how individuals are leaving one another, however I additionally come from my dad and mom leaving one another as a result of they hated one another, so I didn’t see that form of love, the type that’s within the movie. I truly invited each my dad and mom to the Cannes premiere. They got here collectively, they usually had been very candy to one another, particularly after seeing the movie. [laughs]
The movie reveals several types of vocation—not solely Anna in her artwork follow, the sculpture and canvas that she creates, but in addition Magnús on the fishing boat, laboring to supply for the household in a distinct sense.
HP: While you’re creating and dealing on one thing, you’re attempting to make the completely different parts join, by some means. Even when not at all times in complete, you’re discovering connections. What sort of artist is Anna? How can the work she’s doing join with the movie? How can the temperament of the movie match inside her work? How can his work life be a distinction to that? How can or not it’s thrilling to go from land to sea? What’s the dialogue between the pictures? That is essential, I believe. It’s crucial that these parts work collectively and discuss to one another, and that there’s dialogue.
After I was in class in Denmark, I studied for 4 years on the movie faculty. Throughout that interval, I used to be employed through the summers to {photograph} the boats from my hometown. I come from a fishing village, and I used to be employed to {photograph} how they fish, as a result of the best way they fish is altering very quick in these fashionable occasions. I used to be imagined to go on each boat and doc the entire course of; it was extraordinarily thrilling for me, however I acquired seasick. Nonetheless, I actually loved the method, and I knew that, after I was spending time there, it could be attention-grabbing to make use of sooner or later. The method of taking a look at this line of labor was very attention-grabbing.
After I began writing “The Love That Stays,” I had a really robust feeling that he was working from sea, and she or he was working from land. Due to my expertise with these years of fishing, and with my spouse’s father being a fisherman, I used to be thrown into that very naturally. It grew to become a really pure resolution, not even a choice—it was virtually as if Magnús determined to be a fisherman earlier than I did. It’s virtually such as you’re simply doing what the movie desires, and also you’re not even making issues up, as a result of it’s already there.
JKD: We’re drawn to contrasts on a regular basis. It’s the comedy and the drama, the absurd and the mundane, the ocean and the earth, the creative world and the handbook labor of pulling up a rope, or chopping a fish in two to generate income, versus attempting to make artwork however not making any cash. If he weren’t a fisherman, the entire movie would disintegrate for us. If she had been an artist, and he was her supervisor, it could not work in any respect.
This begins as Anna’s movie however ends with Magnús, as he faces a way of loneliness and impotence that’s directly heartbreaking, unusual, and really humorous. How did you arrive on the movie’s last vacation spot?
HP: After I’m engaged on a movie, it’s not solely a story that I’m working from; it’s additionally a construction and a type. But it surely’s not sufficient simply to have a structural type. There are such a lot of narratives on the market which are attention-grabbing, but when there’s not a type that fits it, stimulates it, and lifts it, I wouldn’t discover it attention-grabbing to work with. Switching from one character to the opposite is a structural type of a story that I discovered very attention-grabbing, however there’s nonetheless an emotional core to it. Generally, you don’t know what you’ve gotten till you’re taking it away. You don’t actually know you’ve gotten love till you lose it. I needed to really feel that ultimately, not solely to see it or inform it narratively, however I needed to really feel it. As a filmmaker, I used to be striving to create that feeling.
JKD: There needed to be openness to it, to the ending. In any other case, you possibly can’t fathom it, and you’ll’t perceive it. I get one thing out of it, and also you get one thing very completely different. Hopefully, that’s the expertise, that individuals make their very own that means, as a result of there’s house to place your self into this story.
“The Love That Stays” will probably be launched Jan. 30 within the U.S. by Janus Movies.
