There are very few filmmakers who are as passionate and invested in their craft as Jim Jarmusch. He cemented his icon status early with his second feature, Stranger Than Paradise (1984), which still retains its benchmark as being a film that, decades later, has lost not a scintilla of its cool credo. We’re now deep into his fifth decade at the vanguard of his unique project, as an image maker of rare singularity, but also as a musician, a painter and a poet – creative side-hustles that all find an outlet in his extraordinary feature films.

His new work, Father Mother Sister Brother, takes the form of three short, intertwining dramas that offer a tender and detailed discussion of what it means to have parents, and what it means to be the child of parents. So pretty universal stuff… Yet Jarmusch is not really interested in fortune cookie truisms, and instead builds out the authenticity and the emotion in these small scenes so truth and recognition can emerge organically.

In the first short, Father, we see Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik taking time out from busy domestic and work lives to visit their shambling old pops (Tom Waits), in his house at the end of a dirt road, and it’s hard to know who’s more nervous about the meeting. Then, a stunted tea party takes place in a plush Dublin stack, hosted by a bestselling author (Charlotte Rampling), and attended by her two odd daughters (Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps). Finally, we cruise the streets of Paris with brother (Luka Sabbat) and sister (Indya Moore) as they head to their parents’ apartment to pack up their affairs following their untimely death. Jarmusch builds in subtle threads between the three disparate dramas to emphasise the connectivity of people and places, while also demonstrating his wizard-like skill in bringing a lyrical coherence to the film as a whole.

Inside the issue, we celebrate Jarmusch and his craft, while also offering a fully-illustrated dossier looking back at every one of his sublime fiction features with new, music-themed illustrations for each one.

On the cover...

Yannik Saal is the Berlin-based illustrator who created the jigsaw-like cover for this issue, which emphasises the graphic novel-like vignette structure of the film, but also the vibrant beauty at the core of its stories. Usually, we have a single portrait on the cover of a film’s most prominent figure, but this time we’ve opted to include all eight of the key protagonists of Father Mother Sister Brother for your delectation.

We have amazing new illustrations in the issue from Eri Aikawa, Racheal Bruce, Simone Goder, Hazel Mason, Michelle Urra, Stéphanie Sergeant, Berta Vallo and Reena Wu.

Little White Lies

Little White White #112