A special screening features three eligible films for the 98th Academy Awards: the tender relationship drama The Love That Remains, Iceland’s official entry for Best International Feature Film, and the Oscar-eligible shorts O (Iceland) and On Weary Wings Go By (Estonia).

The Love That Remains
Dir. Hlynur Pálmason | Iceland/Denmark/Sweden/France, 2025 | 109 min
In Icelandic with English subtitles

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.

O
Dir. Rúnar Rúnarsson | Iceland/Sweden, 2024 | 19 min
In Icelandic with English subtitles

A fragile soul’s inner turmoil unfolds as he grapples with personal demons while pursuing a seemingly mundane goal, unveiling the profound human struggle within life’s simplicity. Praised as “a deep, uncompromising leap into the abyss of humanity’s self-destructive nature,” O celebrates the battles we fight in the mundanity of everyday life.

On Weary Wings Go By (Linnud läinud)
Dir. Anu-Laura Tuttelberg, Estonia & Lithuania, 2024 | 11 min. | No dialogue

In this animated wintery poem of Nordic nature, the sun moves low, and days shorten. Birds fly south, and porcelain animals and insects hide from the freezing wind and snow. Only a small porcelain girl wanders the abandoned landscape, with no way to get out.