Father Mother Brother Sister: Jarmusch Wins Golden Lion
VENICE, SEPTEMBER 2025
By Burcu Beaufort
Written and directed by Jarmusch himself, Father Mother Brother Sister is a charming anthology film composed of three epilogues, each centered on a different family in three different cities: New Jersey, Dublin, and Paris. The structure feels instantly familiar to anyone who knows Jarmusch’s universe, reminiscent of his classic Night on Earth (1991), which unfolds five stories of taxi drivers across the globe, from Los Angeles to Rome.
Images by Frederick Elmes, Vague Notion
Jarmusch returns to the elements he loves most: cars as intimate spaces and conversations that happen within them, often with no eye contact. This has long been one of his favorite devices, and here again it sets the tone. His dialogue-heavy films move with a gentle rhythm, never too dramatic, always light, inviting us into the warm, peculiar Jarmusch universe where everyone somehow belongs.
Over twenty years later, Jarmusch reunites with longtime collaborator and friend Tom Waits, who plays the father in the film’s first chapter. With his whiskey-soaked voice, Waits greets his grown-up children (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik), offering them nothing more than water and then tea, raising a toast each time. The awkward silences between parents and adult children, so universally familiar, are hilariously captured. With his sharp eye for detail and wit, Jarmusch once again finds the poetry in the small, strange moments of human connection.
Over twenty years later, Jarmusch reunites with longtime collaborator and friend Tom Waits, who plays the father in the film’s first chapter. With his whiskey-soaked voice, Waits greets his grown-up children (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik), offering them nothing more than water and then tea, raising a toast each time. The awkward silences between parents and adult children, so universally familiar, are hilariously captured. With his sharp eye for detail and wit, Jarmusch once again finds the poetry in the small, strange moments of human connection.
The film feels less about a simple theme of family love and more about the quiet estrangements that come with time. Children grow apart from parents, siblings from one another. Yet Jarmusch suggests that parents, too, drift away from their children. His perspective is closer to: “I’m your parent, but I have my own life, you know?” He strips away fixed family roles and creates a stage where everyone meets as individuals. There is no heavy conflict, only subtle moments where each character protects their own space, sometimes through tender lies.
As strong as the first epilogue Father is, clear in its point and quietly moving, the following two, Mother and Brother Sister, fall into repetition. Even the stellar trio of Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, and Vicky Krieps in Mother, overstyled in YSL pieces, cannot fully lift the sense of sameness. By the third act, Brother and Sister, the film loses some of its earlier energy, with performances by Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat feeling flat and the playful wit of the first episode less present.
Still, Jarmusch delivers something both new and familiar. It is a quietly heartwarming film, full of the intimate, character-driven moments that define his work. Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, it is set for a theatrical release later this year.