Directed by Jarmusch from his own script, Father Mother Sister Brother is described as a triptych with three stories that all concern the relationships between adult children, their somewhat distant parent (or parents) and each other. Each of the three chapters takes place in the present and each in a different country. Father is set in the northeast United States (with Waits, Driver and Bialik), Mother in Dublin (with Blanchett, Rampling and Krieps), and Sister Brother in Paris (with Sabbat and Moore).

In his director’s statement released by the fest, Jarmusch states, “Father Mother Sister Brother is a kind of anti-action film, its subtle and quiet style carefully constructed to allow small details to accumulate — almost like flowers being carefully placed in three delicate arrangements. Collaborations with the masterful cinematographers Frederick Elmes and Yorick Le Saux, the brilliant editor Affonso Gonçalves, and other frequent collaborators elevate what started as words on a page into a form of pure cinema.”

During Sunday’s official Venice Film Festival press conference, Jarmusch quipped, “I don’t know where the hell it came from” when asked how he came up with the idea for such a project.

“I usually carry ideas around for a year or more, sometimes many years, before I finally write very fast in a number of weeks. I wrote this in like three weeks. I don’t know really where it comes from,” he explained, adding that he hopes people consume all three chapters in one sitting rather than divide it up. “If you were to show one chapter without the others, I would be mortified because I worked very, very hard to do it with this structure.”

The teaser, which just hit YouTube, comes ahead of the film’s Venice Film Festival world premiere on Saturday, Aug. 30. Included on the roster of collaborators is Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello, credited as artistic director. Vaccarello has ramped up the house’s film ambitions in recent years. Father Mother Sister Brother will be released by Mubi in the U.S. on Dec. 24.

Sunday’s world premiere came just a few hours after that press conference, which featured the typical questions about style, performance inspiration and how Jarmusch came up with the idea for the film in the first place. Then it took a turn when Jarmusch was asked about Mubi’s recent procurement of a $100 million investment from Sequoia Capital. The company is reportedly a key investor in Israeli defense-tech startup Kela, which was founded by four veterans of Israeli intelligence units in response to the terror attacks of Oct. 7. A host of filmmakers linked with Mubi have signed a letter criticizing Mubi amid growing backlash and the CEO responded earlier this month.

“I was, of course, disappointed and quite disconcerted by this relationship,” Jarmusch said at the presser. “I’m an independent filmmaker, and I have taken money from various sources to be able to realize my films. And I consider pretty much all corporate money [to be] dirty money. If you start analyzing each of these film companies and their financing structures, you’re going to find a lot of nasty dirt. It’s all there.”