‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ Review: Jim Jarmusch’s Gentle Meditation on Family

Do we ever really know the people closest to us? That could be the central question driving Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, the surprise winner of this year’s Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. “Surprise” because this is a film made in a decidedly minor key—minimalist even by the standards of the director of Broken Flowers. Structured in three episodes that faintly recall Night on Earth, Jarmusch builds a series of domestic situations that differ in setting and tone, yet share subtle echoes and thematic undercurrents. Chief among them: the quiet, persistent presence of secrets, lies, and unspoken mysteries that define family relationships.

Three cities, three family configurations, but three stories united by the same narrative and emotional thread: everything we don’t know about the people we grew up with. The third episode breaks somewhat from the mold, replacing emptiness and awkwardness with tenderness and connection. It’s the story that seems to suggest that—even with large gaps in what we know about each other—a deeper emotional bond can lead to very different outcomes.

The first story, Father, follows two siblings driving through the snow to visit their father, who lives alone in a remote cabin. Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emmy (Mayim Bialik) appear to have a cordial but distant relationship, as though they rarely see each other. Their father (Tom Waits), a widower, is an eccentric man who seems to have deliberately neglected his home rather than fixed it up for their visit. Much of the episode’s first half takes place in the car, with the siblings talking about their father’s financial troubles and how they occasionally help him with money. The reunion itself is stiff and uneasy: conversation falters, silences stretch on, and it quickly becomes clear that neither side has much interest in reconnecting. A late twist—quiet but striking—drives home the film’s core idea: the secrets that lie between parents and children.

The second episode, Mother, takes place in Dublin and, despite differences in class and manners, mirrors the first in many ways. Here, the mother (Charlotte Rampling) is a popular novelist living in an elegant house, preparing an elaborate tea for her two daughters—a yearly ritual that seems to be the only time they see one another. The daughters are Timothea (Cate Blanchett), a tense, high-strung woman whose car breaks down on the way, and Lilith (Vicky Krieps), who travels with a friend—perhaps her girlfriend—played by Sarah Greene, posing as her Uber driver. Their conversation flows a bit more easily than in Father, but is still riddled with awkward pauses and half-truths. This time, however, the lies come from the daughters—especially Lilith—who constantly shade or conceal the truth.

The final story, Sister Brother, is the most distinct of the three. Set in Paris, it centers on twins Billy (Luka Sabbat) and Skye (Indya Moore), who, unlike the other pairs, seem genuinely close and affectionate with each other. Their parents are gone, and they are meeting to say goodbye to the apartment where the family once lived. Billy has already moved their belongings into storage, and the now-empty space becomes a vessel for memory and quiet reflection. Though the tone is gentler and warmer—their parents clearly gave them love—the theme of mystery lingers: despite their affection, neither really knows much about their parents’ private lives.

Across the three stories, Jarmusch weaves small, playful connections that might seem coincidental or contrived, but serve as subtle unifying threads. Each segment includes a passing encounter with skateboarders, stray remarks about water, a debate over whether it’s appropriate to toast with tea or coffee, the recurring appearance of a familiar watch brand (real or fake), and the casual repetition of a rare English idiom. These echoes feel less like clues than like winks—delicate bridges linking three very different encounters into a single, quiet conversation.

The same applies to the film’s formal design: recurring overhead shots of tables, similarly staged car rides, and, of course, those long silences and awkward pauses so characteristic of Jarmusch’s cinema—moments that can elicit either laughter or unease. This is most evident in the first two episodes, steeped in emptiness and emotional paralysis, in the inability to have a conversation that goes beyond “how’s everything going?” In the third, however, those silences pulse with life—with emotion, with love.

Each family’s story is different, and we may never truly know our parents or our children, but affection has a way of bridging even the widest gaps. The message is simple, even modest—like one of Jarmusch’s haikus—but no less resonant for it.