Stranded in a small Icelandic town, a young Portuguese man named Paulo (Hugo de Sousa) seeks out human connections and intimacy during the Earth’s final days.

Sometimes you watch a film at exactly the right time and it hits you in a way it probably wouldn’t at any other time. That’s how I felt about Everything in the End. It’s a film that was made pre-pandemic but is one that is strangely relevant to our times now.

It’s a film about loneliness and isolation but also making connections with other people. Everyone is just waiting for the world to end. How and why this is happening you don’t know, there’s just an acceptance of what is coming and Paulo and everyone else he meets is just in a strange limbo as they live out their final days. As Paulo meets different people, sometimes multiple times, others just in passing, it’s little moments of connection that often feel bigger because soon they are never going to meet someone new again.

There’s a sense of both longing and acceptance throughout Everything in the End. The longing for more time, to have done and seen more things in what time they were given. But also, the acceptance that they don’t have that time, this is where they have chosen to spend their last days, with these people. That Paulo decided to travel to rural Iceland where he knew no one isn’t easy for some characters to understand but they take him at face value because what harm can anyone do now when the world is ending?

The fact that there’s no subtitles when characters speak Icelandic or Portuguese is really effective. English is the mutual language (some characters speak it better than others) so when someone tries to talk to Paulo in Icelandic before realising he doesn’t understand you feel as lost as he does. Likewise in one emotional scene where Paulo is rambling in Portuguese you just have to listen to the emotions and while I didn’t understand what he was saying, I knew what he was talking about due to context clues in previous scenes.

Rural Iceland looks beautiful yet haunting and it feels like the perfect place to wait for the end of the world. There’s a lot of wide shots of Paulo walking through fields or sitting on the shore perfectly encapsulating the loneliness he feels. Having those times where Paulo is alone makes the moments where he is with others more impactful.

Everything in the End is a really impactful film full of longing and grief and though things are undoubtable terrible for Paulo and the rest of the world, there’s still small moments of joy to be found. It’s those little sparks of light and connection that pull us through tough times and even though Paulo’s fate is inevitable, those connections still having meaning.

Everything in the End is one of those films where I was impressed as I watched it but then it’s one that I’ve been unable to stop thinking about since. It’s so melancholy but almost hopeful at the same time. Like I said, I think living during a pandemic where there’s been times I’ve felt isolated from loved ones and adrift has made Everything in the End take on new meaning and become almost strangely comforting. 5/5.