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"Why are there no locks on the doors?" Film Movement has revealed an official trailer for a Swiss film titled The Sparrow in the Chimney, also known as Der Spatz im Kamin in German. It's the latest feature from acclaimed Swiss writer & director Ramon Zücher, also of the creepy The Girl and The Spider before this. Karen and Markus live with their children in Karen's parents’ house. Karen's sister Jule travels with her family to Markus' birthday party. While Karen takes everyone’s breath away with her domineering manner, Jule is the complete opposite. Gradually a front forms against Karen until everything escalates into a fiery inferno. An inferno that destroys the old to create the new. Described as a "darkly engrossing psychodrama of pent-up domestic tensions" with a "venomously comedic touch." The film stars Maren Eggert and Britta Hammelstein as Karen and Jule, plus Luise Heyer, Andreas Döhler, & Milian Zerzawy.

Since its premiere at last year’s Locarno Film Festival, we’ve long-awaited the U.S. release of Ramon Zürcher’s The Sparrow in the Chimney, the trilogy-capper following the formally thrilling The Strange Little Cat and The Girl and the Spider. Starring Maren Eggert, Britta Hammelstein, Andreas Döhler, and Milian Zerzawy, the Zürcher brothers’ latest captures a dysfunctional family over the course of three days. Ahead of Film Movement’s theatrical release beginning at Bam on August 1, we’re pleased to debut the new trailer.

Here’s the synopsis: “Karen (Maren Eggert), along with her husband Markus (Andreas Döhler) and their children, lives in her childhood home left behind after the death of her mother. When her sister, Jule (Britta Hammelstein) visits with her family to celebrate Markus’s birthday, the weekend opens old wounds and past traumas, unleashing repressed feelings that threaten to destroy their relationship and shatter Karen’s grip on reality.

The opening frame of “The Sparrow in the Chimney” evokes a kind of art-directed ideal of country living: In a spacious, rustically textured farmhouse kitchen, mid-afternoon sunlight pours in through open windows so large they double as French doors, looking out onto rolling, summer-kissed lawns and hazy woods beyond. A regal ginger cat slinks in over the sill, as amplified birdsong and insect chatter also seem to blur the indoor-outdoor boundary. A casserole simmers patiently on the stove. Who wouldn’t want to live like this? Pretty much everyone, it turns out, in Ramon and Silvan Zürcher’s elegantly vicious domestic horror movie, which forensically unpicks the compacted resentments, betrayals and traumas underpinning a single weekend family gathering, with a touch as icy as the lighting is consistently, relentlessly warm.

The Zürcher twins — who take a joint “a film by” credit on all their work, though only Ramon is billed here as writer,...

Tense, ominous, and stuffed with psychosexual insinuation almost to the point of absurdity, The Sparrow in the Chimney has much in common thematically with writer-director Ramon Zürcher’s previous feature, The Girl and the Spider, which he co-directed with his twin brother, Silvan Zürcher. His third feature, on which Silvan Zürcher served as first assistant director, is a similarly elliptical chamber piece demonstrating a fascination with the conflicts and desires that simmer beneath mundane or sedate social surfaces, though here an expanded canvas allows him to occasionally loosen up and paint with slightly broader strokes.

The film opens with a few bucolic, sun-dappled images of a rural house and its surrounding countryside, the setting for an extended family gathering arranged by dour, prickly matriarch Karen (Maren Eggert) in honor of her husband Markus’s (Andreas Döhler) birthday. We’re soon introduced to the family of Karen’s more outwardly relaxed,...

After two of the finest films of their respective years, The Strange Little Cat and The Girl and the Spider, Ramon and Silvan Zürcher are back this year to close out their animal trilogy. The Sparrow in the Chimney, which world premieres this Saturday at Locarno Film Festival, features a cast including Maren Eggert, Britta Hammelstein, Luise Heyer, Andreas Döhler, Milian Zerzawy, Lea Zoe Voss, Paula Schindler, Ilja Bultmann, and Luana Greco. Ahead of the premiere, the first trailer has now arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “Karen lives with her husband Markus and their children in her idyllic childhood home. Karen’s sister Jule and her family are visiting for Markus’ birthday. The two women could not be more different. Grim reminders of their deceased mother incite Jule’s rebellion against her domineering sister. As the house gradually fills with life and a sparrow in the chimney seeks a way out to freedom,...

Ramon Zürcher’s “dysfunctional family portrait” “The Sparrow in the Chimney” (“Der Spatz im Kamin”) has debuted a trailer ahead of its premiere in Locarno’s international competition.

Produced by his twin brother Silvan Zürcher for Zürcher Film, “The Sparrow in the Chimney” was co-produced by Srf Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen / Srg Ssr, while Cercamon handles sales.

In the film, Maren Eggert, Britta Hammelstein, Luise Heyer, Andreas Döhler and Milian Zerzawy star as family members preparing for a birthday party and getting more than a generous helping of cake once old traumas start coming to the surface.

Karen – played by Eggert, known for sci-fi romance “I’m Your Man” – lives with her husband Markus and their children in her childhood home. Her sister Jule and her family are visiting, but constant reminders of their deceased mother are impossible to shake off.

“I think these kinds of relationships and psychological abysses are my main interest.

Der Spatz im Kamin

This latest micro indie film from Ramon and Silvan Zürcher titled Der Spatz im Kamin (which translates to The Sparrow in the Chimney) would have filmed last summer in the Swiss city of Bern – and it completes the trilogy of films. It’s a dysfunctional family film enlisted players Maren Eggert, Britta Hammelstein, Andreas Döhler and Milian Zerzawy. The Strange Little Cat (2013) and The Girl and the Spider (2021) have been acclaimed critically.

Gist: Karen (Maren Eggert) and Markus (Andreas Döhler) live with their children in Karen’s parents’ house. Karen’s sister Jule (Britta Hammelstein) travels with her family to Markus’ birthday party.…...