Viewer Advice: Contains depictions of violence towards animals.

Tensions explode in a family’s country home in the Zürcher brothers’ follow-up to their acclaimed The Girl and the Spider (MIFF 2021).

Middle-aged couple Karen (Maren Eggert, I Was at Home, But, MIFF 2019; The Dreamed Path, MIFF 2017) and Markus (Andreas Döhler, Winners, MIFF 2024) live with their kids in Karen’s childhood home in the countryside. Their peaceful life is about to be shattered by the arrival of Karen’s combative sister and her family. Soon, the house is bursting with people – and tension – and it’s only a matter of time before it all goes up in flames.

Forming a trilogy on human togetherness that began with the internationally lauded The Strange Little Cat and continued with The Girl and the Spider, The Sparrow in the Chimney marks the highly anticipated return of Ramon and Silvan Zürcher, the Swiss filmmaking brothers behind some of the most distinctive experimental dramas to emerge from Europe. Rebellious and hopeful, their latest escalates the drama begun in their micro-budget debut, depicting not just the liberation of a woman from the grip of dysfunctional blood ties, but also the boundaries and possibilities of relationships beyond the toxic, tangled webs we weave.