Loveless (Russian: Нелюбовь, romanized: Nelyubov) is a 2017 drama film[a] directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, who co-wrote it with Oleg Negin.

The story concerns two separated parents, played by Maryana Spivak and Aleksey Rozin, whose loveless relationship has decayed into a state of bitterness and hostility.

Both parents have new relationships: Boris with Masha, a young woman who is pregnant with his child; and Zhenya with Anton, an older and wealthier man with an adult daughter.

Three years after his disappearance, on the wooded path along which Alyosha used to walk home from school, the strip of tape he threw onto the tree remains as a surviving remnant of his existence.

The cast includes:[16] Critic Adam Nayman argued the theme of Loveless is "neglect" and that Alyosha represents "the lost innocence of a society deep in the throes of self-absorption".

[22] In his review, Mark Kermode judged the police as "uncaring and ineffectual", saying this reflects a theme common throughout Zvyagintsev's work, but added the search-and-rescue team offered a contrast; "The volunteers are decent and driven, their stoical mission at odds with the dehumanising cycle of suburban life".

[14] The settings and weather also feature in the themes, which according to Horwitz are "rooted in a peculiarly Russian landscape, existential and literal", exemplified by the "bleak, snowy day" that forms the backdrop of the prologue.

[21] The wintry forest featured in the prologue conveys the "eerie air of a gothic fairy tale" in Abraham's opinion;[18] the use of the cinematography in the initial scenes may also give the camera "an independence of movement"; Hynes observed it "zooming into the split of a tree, panning skyward from the foot of it".

[21] Felperin viewed the abandoned building as symbolic, featuring broken glass and an empty pool that "starts to look like a mass grave, but one that could never hold all the runaways of the nation".

[29] Robbie Collin argued Loveless has "vast significance", noting that the story opens with Russians fearing the end of the world during the 2012 phenomenon and closes with Zhenya wearing an outfit displaying the word "Russia" prominently while running on a treadmill.

[14] According to Peter Rainer, Loveless is "perhaps [Zvyagintsev's] most encompassing indictment of Russian society", considering the fears of the end of the world lead into the missing person case.

Rainer wrote, "Alyosha, with his pugnacious, beseeching face, is not only a lost boy: In the movie's terms, he also represents the loss of something spiritually significant in modern Russia".

[32] According to Koehler, the film negatively depicts modern Russia in a restaurant scene in which young men and women exchange telephone numbers and take group selfies.

[36] An unsuccessful attempt to buy the rights to the miniseries led writers Oleg Negin and Zvyagintsev to redraw the plot, deciding to base it on news stories about the search and rescue team Liza Alert.

[9][37] Negin submitted the title Nelyubov to Zvyagintsev, which the director said is a Russian word referring to both a lack of love and a dire spiritual condition.

[31] He chose to start the story in October 2012, which he said was a point when the Russian people were optimistic about beneficial political reform, ending in disappointment in 2015.

[18] Rodnyansky instead appealed for funding from wealthy Russian Gleb Fetisov and foreign companies, including Why Not Productions in France and Les Films du Fleuve in Belgium.

The website's critical consensus states, "Loveless uses its riveting portrait of a family in crisis to offer thought-provoking commentary on modern life in Russia—and the world beyond its borders".

[70] At Cannes, The Toronto Star's Peter Howell praised Loveless as "masterfully bleak" and endorsed it for the Palme d'Or; he said it was also leading in the critics' polls.

[72] For Variety, Owen Gleiberman called the film "compelling and forbidding" and "an ominous, reverberating look" at "the crisis of empathy at the culture’s core" in contemporary Russian society.

[74] The Hollywood Reporter's Leslie Felperin praised its intensity, avoidance of a heavy-handed approach to many issues—including in its examination of lack of social bonds within a technological society—and the ways damaging relationships are passed down through family histories.

[24] In The Daily Telegraph, Robbie Collin awarded it five stars, hailing it as "pristine and merciless", and compared its opening with the ominous prologue to the 1973 film Don't Look Now.

[75] On Vulture.com, Emily Yoshida called it a "dour" film with unlikable characters and a lack of focus to make a coherent point, and said the positive was that it inspired gratitude in viewers who did not live under Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime.

[77] In France, Jacques Mandelbaum of Le Monde said Zvyagintsev established a dark tone in which the characters fail due to their selfishness and negativity.

[81] In the German newspaper Der Spiegel, Carolin Weidner focused on the selfish nature of the parent characters and their lack of awareness of their son's disappearance, and interpreted it as a parable of Russia wrapped up in the 2012 phenomenon.

[84] Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang called the film "a withering snapshot of contemporary Russian malaise".

[22] Anthony Lane, in a positive review for The New Yorker, noted the bleakness of the film's story line but found it "so much more gripping than grim".

[19] Critic David Ehrlich named Evgueni and Sacha Galperine's score as the ninth-best cinematic soundtrack of 2017, particularly praising "11 Cycles of E" as "striking".

[86] Producer Alexander Rodnyansky said that when the Russian Oscar Committee was selecting a submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Loveless's political critics campaigned against it but it remained a frontrunner due to the Jury Prize and the positive reception in North America.

[39] Critic Anton Dolin argued Loveless's Sony distribution and Zvyagintsev's previous nomination for Leviathan also gave it an edge over other Russian films considered.