“These Past Three Years We Have Witnessed An Atrocity”

Greece’s premier film event, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, opened its 2025 edition — the 66th annual festival to be held in the country’s bustling second city — last night, with a screening of Jim Jarmusch’s latest Father Mother Sister Brother.

Jarmusch wasn’t in attendance at last night’s screening, but he did send a video note. The screening was instead introduced by Indya Moore, who stars in the Golden Lion winner alongside Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Sarah Greene, Luka Sabbat, and Françoise Lebrun.

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The film’s producer, Atilla Salih Yücer, was also in attendance alongside DoP Frederick Elmes, a veteran Jarmusch and David Lynch collaborator, and costume designer Catherine George. Both Elmes and George will host masterclass sessions for festival audiences during their time in Greece.

“Father Mother Sister Brother is a really important film because it makes you think about fathers, sisters, mothers, and brothers,” Moore began as she introduced the film.

“These past three years, we have witnessed an atrocity that we thought we would never see happen to fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. And I grieve with the entirety of our human diaspora as we spiral into some mysterious space of self-destruction. But it’s film and TV and storytelling in general that help us remember the ways that we are not just individuals, but we exist as a collective. And that’s why when we listen to each other’s love and grief and joy, we think about our own.”

Moore continued to say that “we are all reflections of one another” and that the safety of our collective futures relies on human beings remembering that “every single person’s experience is a reflection of everyone else’s.”

“If we don’t keep that in mind, we might lose the opportunity to continue our love and joy and creation of families on this planet earth,” Moore said.

Moore ended by asking viewers in the room to “think about not only your immediate families, but think about everyone else’s with the same level of regard we think about ourselves” as they watched the film.

Father Mother Sister Brother tells the story of estranged siblings who reunite after years apart and are forced to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.

In a review out of Venice, where the film won the Golden Lion, Deadline’s Damon Wise called the movie “an elevated cringe comedy” that harkens back to Jarmusch’s earlier work of the 1980s and ’90s.

“Compared to 2005’s Broken Flowers, this is a wilfully obscure step back to his deadpan, experimental roots, a gentle, almost deliberately un-film that is best not viewed in too much proximity to the witching hour,” Wise wrote.

The 2025 Thessaloniki International Film Festival runs until November 9.

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