When the Light Breaks

When the Light Breaks (Icelandic: Ljósbrot, lit. 'Refraction') is a 2024 drama film by Rúnar Rúnarsson. The film depicts a young woman grieving for her first love's death during one summer day. It was selected as the opening film for the Un Certain Regard selection of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it had its world premiere on 15 May 2024. The film's events take place over a single day in Iceland. It opens with Diddi and Una in the early stage of a relationship. They go from an ocean outlook to Diddi's house that he shares with mutual friend Gunni. They talk in bed. Diddi leaves early; Una, hearing Gunni come home, sneaks out. Jóhann Jóhannsson's requiem, "Odi et Amo" (Latin for "I Love and I Hate") plays, as an extended sequence of lights in the dark is revealed to be lighting in a road tunnel which is engulfed in an enormous fireball. Later that morning, Una and Gunni meet at the arts college where they and Diddi study.