Father Mother Sister Brother (dir. Jim Jarmusch)
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 110 mins
UK Distributor: MUBI
UK Release Date: 10 April 2026
WHO’S IN FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER?
Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, Luka Sabbat, Françoise Lebrun
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Jim Jarmusch (director, writer, composer), Joshua Astrachan, Charles Gillibert, Carter Logan and Atilla Salih Yücer (producers), Annika Henderson (composer), Frederick Elmes and Yorick Le Saux (cinematographers), Affonso Gonçalves (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A triptych of family affairs from across the world…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER?
The very first thing we see in filmmaker Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother is a logo designating the film as a recipient of the Golden Lion, the top prize of the Venice Film Festival. It’s also why this film has already become so notorious, albeit for the wrong reasons.
While there have been plenty of films at past editions of the festival that won the award which had been fairly unpopular among critics and audiences (Joker, Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere and Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution among them), there was something about Jarmusch’s film emerging as the top choice that seemed to really rub people the wrong way. The main consensus among them was that, while the film itself was perfectly fine, it sure as hell wasn’t worthy of going home with one of the top prizes on the film festival circuit, especially when far more worthy titles like No Other Choice and The Voice of Hind Rajab, the latter receiving the longest-on-record standing ovation at any film festival, were also in contention.
Now, it seems that nobody can talk about Father Mother Sister Brother without bringing up its unexpected triumph, even in reviews such as this. But that’s largely because being awarded such a prize is perhaps the most interesting thing about it, because in typical Jarmusch fashion it’s a largely dry and exceptionally understated drama that has plenty going on underneath the surface, but God help you if you can figure out what it’s all trying to say.
The film is a triptych anthology, separated into three very loosely connected segments with shared themes and motifs, but all revolving around the concept of family. The first story, titled Father, sees siblings Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) having an awkward visit with their elderly father (Tom Waits) in his remote lakeside cabin. The second, Mother, focuses on elderly Dublin-based author Catherine (Charlotte Rampling) hosting a tea-and-cakes lunch with her estranged daughters Timothea (Cate Blanchett) and Lilith (Vicky Krieps). Finally, Sister Brother follows siblings Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat) grappling with the sudden death of their parents in Paris.
Intriguingly, or perhaps frustratingly, there’s very little to say about any of these stories. They are mostly free of overt drama, characterisation is thin as can be, and there’s nothing wholly remarkable about the otherwise competent filmmaking and standard performances, even by powerhouse actors like Blanchett and Driver. For at least the first two segments, Jarmusch maintains his usual deadpan style to ensure that there isn’t anything too substantial to identify on the surface, keeping everything neatly under wraps to where you almost need an additional viewing so that you can actually determine what is being conveyed in terms of emotion or even plot. Except, unlike some of Jarmusch’s past films like Paterson or his previous anthology film Coffee and Cigarettes, there isn’t a whole lot to find underneath, since it’s so reserved in tone and so opaque in form that finding meaning behind anything that goes on here becomes a Herculean task in and of itself.
The only section that actually feels as though there’s enough material to fill an entire feature on its own is Sister Brother, for within the short amount of time spent on Skye and Billy we get a strong feel of the emotional core between these characters, who thanks to soulful turns by Moore and Sabbat as well as their tender sibling chemistry feel like genuine people instead of the usual dry caricatures that Jarmusch often displays in his narratives. As opposed to the other stories, theirs is understated in the sense where you can still understand the core concepts that the filmmaker wants to convey, in this case being about the impact that family members have on our lives and how we often take them too much for granted, and it handles that so well here that it makes you wonder why this wasn’t the whole film instead.
But sadly, you do have to sit through two far less engaging sections before you get to it, and that does bring the overall quality down. There are loose thematic connections throughout all of them, notably each section having a group of skateboarders zoom by our main characters in slow-motion, while certain lines of dialogue or important items are recontextualised every time, but other than that there is little beyond the occasional filmmaking flub (including a poor early use of green-screen that is pretty distracting) that should get anyone outside of a particular niche audience interested in these overly lean stories. Even by the time we get to that standout third section, it comes when the viewer might have become too bored to care, thereby risking one’s attention and intrigue when things finally seem as though they’re coming together.
As a whole, it feels like the kind of film that someone who considers themselves to be intellectually superior over everyone else would watch and come out boasting that they fully understood every single thing that was being said, even that which was being kept far beneath the surface. That’s the kind of person you want to punch, and while you might not entirely want to do that toward Father Mother Sister Brother, just for its few strong moments, it may be worth doing to whoever decided to give this the Golden Lion instead of The Voice of Hind Rajab.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Father Mother Sister Brother is a largely dry and frustratingly understated anthology by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch that largely struggles to form an emotional connection with the viewer, save for a genuinely strong final section that makes watching the less engaging first two stories almost worth it.
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