In a remote but spacious ancestral home, where Karen (Maren Eggert) lives with her husband and children, preparations are afoot for an extravagant birthday celebration. As the house starts to fill up, however, tensions mount, and the space becomes a veritable pressure cooker of longstanding familial strife. As animals of all sorts roam freely through the airy domestic space, the location becomes the locus of sundry overlapping dramas. It is only a matter of time before the fires start burning.
The third and final installment of Ramon Zürcher’s “animal trilogy,” following 2013’s The Strange Little Cat and 2021’s The Girl and the Spider (both co-directed with Silvan Zürcher), The Sparrow in the Chimney finds the filmmaker perfecting his signature aesthetic. Character interactions are at once psychologically grounded and quirkily exaggerated; edits are deployed for maximum spatial disruption; surreal comic interludes bleed into quotidian reality. An entropic symphony of domestic existence, it is a film whose luminous surfaces yield only deeper enigmas.
Supported by
Maren Eggert, Britta Hammelstein, Luise Heyer, Andreas Döhler, Milan Zerzawy, Lea Zoe Voss
Switzerland
2024
In German with English subtitles
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Wednesday October 08
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Credits & Director
Producer
Silvan Zürcher
Screenwriter
Ramon Zürcher
Cinematography
Alex Hasskerl
Editor
Ramon Zürcher
Production Design
Peter Scherz
Original Music
Balz Bachmann
Ramon Zürcher
Born in 1982, Swiss screenwriter and director Ramon Zürcher studied visual arts at the Bern Academy of the Arts and film directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. His debut feature, The Strange Little Cat premiered at Berlinale Forum in 2013 and was selected at over 80 festivals. In 2021, his second film, The Girl and the Spider, also premiered at Berlinale where it was awarded Best Director and the FIPRESCI prize in the Encounters section. The Sparrow in the Chimney is his third feature.
Filmography: The Strange Little Cat (2013); The Girl and the Spider (2021)
Photo by Iris Janke
Reflections
See more films in this series
The Strange Little Cat
This droll, perfectly executed comedy chronicles a day in the life of a multigenerational family prepping a celebratory dinner in their cramped Berlin apartment. Putting daily life’s absurdities on display, it's an exciting choreography of the quotidian.
The Girl and the Spider
Ramon and Silvan Zürcher’s sly and daring film takes place in Mara and Lisa's spacious bohemian apartment as the latter moves out. Mise-en-scène, humour, and stylized character interactions take centre stage in this pure cinematic pleasure.
The Sparrow in the Chimney
Preparations are afoot for an extravagant celebration. But as the house fills up, tensions mount and it becomes a veritable pressure cooker of familial strife. Ramon Zürcher delivers precise formal play and acute psychological mystery.
Choreographed Chaos: Ramon and Silvan Zürcher on Domestic Surrealism and Cinematic Precision
Employing collaboration and a shared vision, Ramon and Silvan Zürcher create meticulously observed, drolly absurd dramas that transform domestic spaces into surreal landscapes.
Image: © Iris Janke