Jim Jarmusch's 'Father Mother Sister Brother' wins Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion

Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch’s dramedy ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’, about the relationships between adult children and their parents, won the top prize, i.e. Golden Lion, at the Venice Film Festival.

In an upset win on Saturday, as the 10-day-long Venice Film Festival drew to its end, after the premiere of several impactful features, American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch’s quietly humorous relationship triptych, ‘Father Mother Brother Sister’, starring Adam Driver, Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett, won the top prize of the fest.

“All of us here who make films are not motivated by competition, but I truly appreciate this unexpected honour,” the Golden Lion winner said, adding that he is ‘learning each time’.

Jarmusch’s win was especially an upset over the festival’s other bigger hits, including the heart-wrenching docudrama about the Gaza war, ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s starrer wrestling biopic of MMA legend Mark Kerr, ‘The Smashing Machine’, and Park Chan-wook’s darkly satirical South Korean thriller ‘No Other Choice’ among others.

However, Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s devastating Gaza docudrama, which received the record 23-minute standing ovation after the screening, was named the runner-up prize, Silver Lion winner, for the dramatised re-telling of the ordeal of Hind Rajab Hamada, a five-year-old Palestinian girl trapped in a car with her dead relatives in January 2024 after they came under fire while fleeing Israeli troops in Gaza City.

Meanwhile, Benny Safdie of ‘The Smashing Machine’ won the Best Director award for his sports biopic.