The Sparrow in the Chimney
Unresolved family tensions erupt at a summer gathering in this metaphysical new drama from the filmmakers behind The Girl with the Spider, delving into the undercurrents of human relationships.
Summer is at its lushest when two sisters gather with their families in the rustic home inherited from their parents to celebrate a birthday. Yet idyllic is the last word to describe the scene: Karen, the stiff host of the house, maintains tense, even hostile relations both with her more spirited younger sister Jule and also with her own family. Secrets, resentments, and unresolved traumas have accumulated in this house and among these people to such a degree that it is only a matter of time before everything breaks out—violently.
Swiss twin filmmakers Ramon and Silvan Zürcher return with the third installment of their animal-titled, multi-character studies of the undercurrents running beneath human relationships, mostly set within domestic interiors. Like The Strange Little Cat (R&A 2013) and The Girl and the Spider (R&A 2021), their precisely choreographed and subtly acted scenes achieve both moving and absurd effects.
In the Zürchers’ stylised, deliberately distanced world, where objects carry deep symbolic weight, communication—its absence, its breakdowns, and its renewals—takes on an almost metaphysical quality. Maren Eggert (I’m Your Man, R&A 2021), a star of German arthouse cinema, leads the ensemble cast as Karen.
Suvi Heino (translated by Kati Ilomäki)
Trailer
