Family Relations Get Toasted and Roasted in Teaser for Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’

Family dynamics fall into focus in a teaser for Jim Jarmusch’s newest film Father Mother Sister Brother.

Directed by Jarmusch from his own script, Father Mother Sister Brother stars many of the auteur’s regulars including Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, Luka Sabbat and Françoise Lebrun.

Described as a triptych, the film contains three stories that all concern the relationships between adult children, their somewhat distant parent (or parents) and each other. Each of the three chapters takes place in the present and each in a different country. Father is set in the northeast United States, Mother in Dublin, and Sister Brother in Paris.

“I’m very happy to see them on the one hand,” Rampling’s matriarch states, a line sure to strike a nerve with anyone that has complicated family dynamics. “But I just have to keep them from stirring things up.”

In his director’s statement released by the fest, Jarmusch states, “Father Mother Sister Brother is a kind of anti-action film, its subtle and quiet style carefully constructed to allow small details to accumulate — almost like flowers being carefully placed in three delicate arrangements. Collaborations with the masterful cinematographers Frederick Elmes and Yorick Le Saux, the brilliant editor Affonso Gonçalves, and other frequent collaborators elevate what started as words on a page into a form of pure cinema.”

The teaser drop comes ahead of the film’s Venice Film Festival world premiere on Saturday, Aug. 30. Included on the roster of collaborators is Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello, who is credited as artistic director. Vaccarello has been ramping up the fashion house’s film ambitions in recent years. Father Mother Sister Brother will be released by Mubi in the U.S. on Dec. 24.