[1][4] 45 Years premiered in the main competition section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival,[5] where Charlotte Rampling won the Silver Bear for Best Actress and Tom Courtenay for Best Actor.

Their morning is somewhat disturbed when Geoff opens a letter telling him that the body of Katya, his German lover in the early 1960s before meeting Kate, has become visible in a melting glacier where she fell into a crevasse on their hike in Switzerland over five decades before.

Kate also takes up smoking again and, upon learning of his visit to the local travel agency to inquire about trips to Switzerland, confronts Geoff about his recent behavior.

They attend their anniversary party in the historic Grand Hall, and Geoff delivers a tearful speech in which he professes his love for Kate.

[12] In a review in The Observer, Mark Kermode described the film as a "subtle examination of the persistence of the past and the fragile (in)stability of the present", arguing that the lead performances "turn an apparently everyday story of a marriage in quiet crisis into something rather extraordinary."

He concluded by observing that, "Like the final shot of The Long Good Friday, which lingers upon Bob Hoskins's face as he revisits the events that brought him to this sorry pass, 45 Years shows us the past materialising in the expressions of those trapped in the present, staring into an uncertain future.