Luxembourgish actor Vicky Krieps says Jim Jarmusch’s new feature, Father Mother Sister Brother, was never designed as a Cannes campaign. “It’s cinema that is not trying to impress,” she told audiences while collecting a Festival President’s Award at Karlovy Vary. Her remark follows the picture’s unexpected absence from this year’s Cannes slate after early trade chatter tipped it for the main competition.
Reports indicate the film was first declined by Cannes, briefly courted for a sidebar, then dropped entirely. Krieps framed the back-and-forth as irrelevant, stressing that Jarmusch “just shoots the film he wants, then lets it travel,” a stance matching his long-held disinterest in festival maneuvering.
Shot quietly last year, the triptych stars Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, Krieps, and Tom Waits. Industry watchers link its Cannes exit to a crowded American lineup and persistent whispers about running time. The episode has revived discussion about perceived gate-keeping on the Croisette, an issue that has also dogged recent works by Mike Leigh and others.
Any premiere uncertainty ended when MUBI chief executive Efe Cakarel confirmed at SXSW London that the film will bow in competition at Venice in early September, sending Jarmusch back to the Lido for the first time since Only Lovers Left Alive. Structured as three loosely linked stories set in the Northeastern U.S., Dublin, and Paris, the drama explores strained parent–child relationships. Producers include Charles Gillibert and Saint Laurent Productions, with MUBI handling distribution.
For Krieps—fresh from Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt—the collaboration aligns with her preference for “quiet, personal” filmmaking over prize-centric roll-outs, underscoring Jarmusch’s own history of sidestepping festival orthodoxies .
