Jim Jarmusch: ‘If Too Many People Like a Film I Make, I Feel Like I’ve Done Something Wrong’

The auteur on why "Father Mother Sister Brother" skipped Cannes and the "very female" film he plans to shoot in 2026.

“I love skaters,” Jim Jarmusch said to me during our recent conversation in Los Angeles. “I love their kind of anarchistic tendencies and their kind of sense of freedom, and the idea that they just have this piece of wood with wheels and they go all over the city. They’re non-binary, and they don’t like authority. And I think it’s beautiful too, watching them. They’re just weird. And I love that a lot of these different techniques and tricks came from breaking into abandoned swimming pools in Southern California, which is so J.G. Ballard to me. It’s so apocalyptic.”

He paused before adding, “Sorry, I know you didn’t ask about the skaters.”

I did not, but such tangents are to be expected and welcomed when speaking to an artist like Jarmusch. The 72-year-old auteur’s ravenous study of arts and culture and disregard for traditional narrative pacing have given us some of the most distinct movies in the history of American cinema. His filmography is a collage as much as anything else, as Jarmusch’s gaze frequently shifts between his myriad interests — including punk rock, modernist poetry, hip-hop, Eastern philosophy, Westerns, Yasujirō Ozu, vampires, and any other art that he happens to be consuming that day. And when you talk to him in person, it all makes sense — his mind floats between these topics as seamlessly as his films drift between seemingly unconnected or inconsequential events, before it all builds toward a symphony that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

His latest film, “Father Mother Sister Brother,” ranks among the best of his 21st-century work. A triptych of three stories set in New Jersey, Dublin, and Paris about families navigating various stages of the parental aging process, the quiet movie once again feels like a collage of Jarmusch’s interests: skateboarders, ornate tea sets, and the old British joke “Bob’s your uncle,” to name a few. With frequent collaborators like Tom Waits and Adam Driver joining new faces including Vicky Krieps and Mayim Bialik (cast because she’s Jarmusch’s favorite “Jeopardy” host), it’s a natural evolution that should delight all the director’s diehard fans.

Jarmusch has worked with episodic formats before in films like “Night on Earth” and “Coffee and Cigarettes,” and he makes it clear that these are not three short films. Even if each one theoretically stands alone, the three chapters only work in the specific order in which he placed them.

“The idea of chapters, or anthology, or what are the other words they use for these? Sometimes it’s different directors making it, and it’s a cinematic form, very popular in the ’60s and ’70s in Europe and in Italy. But it’s also a literary form to me. And I don’t know, I just like it,” he said. “I was trying to accumulate things that would build to something without you noticing in a way. So that the third story, it would reach a kind of emotional — not a dramatically emotional thing — but reach a kind of emotional moment.”

Of course, “a kind of emotional moment” is the most catharsis anyone can reasonably expect from a Jarmusch movie. But the famously cool and unbothered director was coming off a rather tumultuous experience. The six-year break since his last film, 2019’s “The Dead Don’t Die,” can partially be attributed to the pandemic and a slew of other creative projects, but he was also burned out after an unpleasant relationship with his last financiers. The experience of making the zombie satire took a lot out of Jarmusch, leading him to consciously step away from filmmaking for four years.

“The last one, ‘The Dead Don’t Die,’ got very stressful by pressure put on me by the financing. I felt like I didn’t focus on the filmmaking because I was getting phone calls during the shooting of, ‘You’re not going to get paid as a screenwriter now because you’re over budget.’ It’s only day 20. And I’m like, ‘What the fuck? I’m trying to set up a shot. I’m trying to make a film.’ And it accumulated,” he said. “And I thought after the film, ‘I’m going to go to the hospital if I have to do it this way.’ It’s not worth it. Because it was really stressing me, and I didn’t have health issues, but I could tell if I followed this kind of lifestyle, I would. So, instead, I did a lot of Tai Chi and did other things.”

A new Jarmusch movie typically means a Cannes premiere, and many cinephiles were surprised to see “Father Mother Sister Brother” missing from this year’s lineup. Jarmusch opted for a Venice premiere — which worked out well for all involved, as the film won the Golden Lion — and he explained that the decision stemmed from Cannes declining to give him a competition slot.

“I submitted it to Cannes, and we were told, ‘It’s not selected for competition. We might put it in a different section.’ To which I responded, ‘I haven’t made a film in five years. I’ve been in Cannes many times. That’s not appropriate to me,'” he said. “Competition’s very important to me in Cannes, not for the competition, but for the profile of the release of my film, so I can start getting the investors paid back, and I can make another film. It’s not about the awards.”

“So I told [Cannes Film Festival director] Thierry Frémaux, ‘No, I’m sorry, I think I won’t have the film in Cannes.’ And showed it immediately to Venice the next day,” he said. “Anyway, it’s OK. It was a good thing. And in a way, I really thank him for it because I got to go to Venice, and Cannes is in May. And I went up to my house in the Catskills for the month of May, and I wrote my new script. So, instead of going to Cannes, I have a new script which is in the works.”

By his own admission, Jarmusch is superstitious about discussing upcoming projects and declined to share many details about the new film, simply saying that it’s a “very female” film with an almost entirely female cast that’s set to shoot in France in 2026. But it’s clear that the response he received in Venice has restored a bit of his enthusiasm for filmmaking.

“I loved being in Venice with the film. I hadn’t been there in a long time, and I really was happy to be there. Venice is so mysterious and strange and great, and the festival’s really great… Now I kind of never want to go to Cannes,” he said, “After I gave my little speech up there, that I kind of improvised, someone in the back of the auditorium says, ‘Jim, you know we love you!’ And everybody applauded, right? They were giving me real, sincere love. It wasn’t 2,000 French hairdressers from L’Oréal in Cannes, you know what I mean? It was real. And that was really moving. I never felt that before.”

One thing they never teach you in film school? How to get your prestigious festival trophies through airport security. After the festival, Jarmusch returned to Paris, where he was working on another project. But the Golden Lion is not the kind of item that can slip through an X-ray machine undetected, and it resulted in quite a scene among the movie-loving airport employees.

“And then here’s a cool thing. I have to bring the Golden Lion. It’s in a box, it’s heavy, it has its own highly padded tote bag thing, and a red box with all these doors that open. So, I have to carry it back to Paris. I’m carrying it on the plane,” he said. “So I go through the X-ray in Venice in the airport, and the woman X-raying it says, ‘Hey, OK, this yours?’ I’m like, ‘Yes.’ ‘OK, what is this? What is in the box?’ I said, ‘Oh, it’s an award from the film festival, the Golden Lion.’ She says, ‘You win the Golden Lion in Venice?’ I go, ‘Yes.’ ‘In the festival?’ She gets everybody, ‘Everyone come here. Congratulations. He won the Golden Lion. It’s here.’ And all these Italians that work in the airport, they’re like TSA people, but Italian. They’re all patting me on the back. It was so cool. It was so Italian.”

An injury prevented Jarmusch from carrying the trophy back to America with him, so he trusted it with his producer Charles Gillibert. “I made him swear, ‘You carry this fucker on, man. You do not check my lion,'” he said. “And right now it’s in my apartment in New York. I’m not sure what to do with it, but I’m very honored.”

Now that he’s back from Venice, Jarmusch isn’t spending too much time basking in the positive reviews. If anything, he’s more interested in hearing from people who didn’t like the film.

“I have a weird thing, I love negative reviews. Or… I wouldn’t say love, but those are what I want to read,” he said. “I look for the ones that didn’t like the film because that means their perceptions were very different than those of us that made the film. I find those very interesting. I read three negative reviews of ‘Father Mother Sister Brother,’ which I found interesting, but I kind of shy away from the ones that are really positive. I’m not someone that wants to gloat over people’s appreciation.”

It goes without saying that “Father Mother Sister Brother” will not be for everyone. As our overstimulating world speeds up, Jarmusch’s already-mellow films are just getting softer and quieter. The auteur is well aware of that, and refreshingly unbothered by it. He even thinks that people are turning to the film because it’s so much gentler than everything else around us. But it’s clear that even if that wasn’t the case, Jarmusch would still be making the exact same kinds of films. He became a god among the indie film crowd by refusing to be anything but himself, and he’s not about to change that now.

“I kind of feel like if too many people like a film I make, I did something wrong,” he added with a laugh. “But I’m very pleased. I’m happy [for] that because this film’s a very quiet kind of experience. So, yeah, I’m proud that it resonates somehow with people. I honestly wasn’t expecting it. And I think part of it is just synchronistic with where we are. If I made that film three years ago, I don’t know if people would’ve liked it so much.”

A MUBI release, “Father Mother Sister Brother” opens in select theaters on Wednesday, December 24.