Jim Jarmusch’s Family Reunions

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Written for MUBI in 2026.

We live in this fucking world now where empathy is supposed to be a weakness, right? So for me, I hope there’s something empathetic in everything I do.

—Jim Jarmusch

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Set in three countries across three parts, Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother (2025) is geographically expansive but dramatically concentrated. The plot of each section—from “Father” to “Mother” to “Sister Brother”—is minimal, recording families’ efforts to become reacquainted over coffee or tea. Thanks to generational gaps and prolonged periods of absence, attempts at reconnection between parents and their grown children are often faltering, and not always successful. The effect is both tragic and comic—at least until the third section, when the restless editing between isolated characters gives way to longer, relaxed takes and meditative pans, opening up to heartfelt rather than dutiful forms of affection.

Various actors from previous Jarmusch films appear in Father Mother Sister Brother. Father, for instance, is played by Tom Waits, who has worked with Jarmusch on five other features. Here, his elusive and eccentric character lives in a house beside a placid lake in rural New Jersey, and he deliberately disarranges his living room ahead of an afternoon visit from his daughter, Emily (Mayim Bialik), and his son, Jeff (Adam Driver). Read more