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Jean and Joan Holbrooke do not finish one another’s sentences. They say the sentences together.
They share the same dreams, make the same verbal mistakes and fall in love with the same man. To the people watching them, their bond is strange enough to become a public spectacle. To the sisters, it may be the only natural way to live.
Written and directed by Werner Herzog, Bucking Fastard follows two sisters whose identities are so closely connected that the outside world struggles to treat them as separate people.
Kate Mara and Rooney Mara, sisters in real life, play Jean and Joan. Their first film together places their natural family connection inside a story about intimacy, obsession and the unsettling difference between being understood and being watched.
Jean and Joan’s shared existence
The official Venice synopsis describes Jean and Joan as sisters who speak in unison, love the same man and experience the same dreams.
Their closeness goes beyond affection. Language, desire and imagination appear to move through them at the same time.
That creates a difficult question for anyone entering their lives. Is the relationship preventing the sisters from developing separate identities, or have they created an identity that belongs to both of them?
The story should resist an easy answer. Outsiders may see dependence where Jean and Joan experience security. Attempts to separate them could be presented as help while ignoring what either woman actually wants.
Their shared love for one man places that bond under pressure. Romantic relationships usually ask people to choose and define themselves as individuals. Jean and Joan approach desire as they approach everything else: together.
The man at the centre of their attention therefore becomes more than a conventional romantic interest. His response can either recognise the sisters’ humanity or turn their attachment into a problem to be controlled.
Searching for a place where love is possible
Additional published descriptions of the film explain that Jean and Joan imagine an idealised version of the Orkneys where true love is possible. Their search leads them towards the extraordinary task of digging through a mountain range.
That element pushes the film beyond ordinary realism. The sisters are not merely dreaming about escape. They are physically working towards a place that may exist only in the world they share.
The imagined destination gives their labour a purpose. If society insists that their relationship is unacceptable, they will attempt to reach somewhere governed by different rules.
A People feature about the production also confirms that the project is the first time Kate and Rooney Mara have acted together in a film.
Casting real sisters in these roles adds another layer to the premise. Kate and Rooney do not share the extreme connection described in the story, but they bring an existing rhythm and history that unrelated performers would need to construct.
When private lives become public entertainment
The Venice synopsis says the audience observes Jean and Joan through the reactions of other people.
Courts and newspapers become part of their story. Some people attempt to help them, while others recognise an opportunity to exploit their unusual relationship.
That outside attention may be one of the film’s most important conflicts.
Once the sisters enter public view, they risk losing control over their own identities. Reporters can reduce them to a headline. Legal authorities can define their behaviour through rules and restrictions. Even well-meaning observers may speak about them without listening to them.
Jean and Joan already communicate differently from everyone around them. Public scrutiny makes the distance wider.
The title itself appears connected to a verbal slip the sisters make simultaneously. What might have been a private mistake becomes another detail through which strangers remember and define them.
The true-story connection
The film’s concept has been connected to the real-life case of British identical twins Freda and Greta Chaplin, whose intense relationship and shared interest in the same man attracted media and legal attention during the 1980s.
Cineuropa’s production coverage describes the film as rooted in their story. Herzog has transformed that inspiration into Jean and Joan Holbrooke, meaning viewers should approach Bucking Fastard as a dramatic interpretation rather than a documentary recreation.
This distinction matters. The fictional names and surreal elements give Herzog room to explore the sisters’ inner world instead of simply restaging a notorious case.
The film may be less interested in deciding whether their behaviour is normal than in examining why society is so eager to turn people who live differently into entertainment.
Werner Herzog’s unusual perspective
The official synopsis moves beyond courts, newspapers and human observers. It also describes the sisters through the eyes of domesticated and wild animals, and through echoes reaching into the earth.
That language suggests the film will not follow a conventional biographical structure. Herzog appears to be placing Jean and Joan inside a wider natural and almost mythic landscape.
Their search for love, their digging and their refusal to exist separately may be presented as a form of obsession. Yet Herzog’s films frequently take determined dreamers seriously even when their ambitions appear irrational to everyone else.
The challenge will be maintaining that curiosity without using the sisters simply as strange objects for the audience to study.
Cast and production
Kate Mara and Rooney Mara lead the film, with Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson also appearing in the principal cast.
The official Venice listing does not provide complete character descriptions for Bloom and Gleeson, so their precise relationships with the sisters should not be overstated before the film is seen.
Herzog wrote the screenplay and directed the 109-minute production. Peter Zeitlinger served as cinematographer, Marco Capalbo edited the film and Ernst Reijseger composed the music.
The film is an Irish-American production presented in English.
Venice screening information
Bucking Fastard is competing in the Venezia 83 main competition.
Its first listed public screening takes place on September 3, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. local time in the Sala Grande. Another public screening is scheduled for September 4 at the PalaBiennale.
The official festival listing does not currently confirm a wide theatrical or streaming date. Flicklevel should update the article when a distributor announces general availability.
Flicklevel outlook
Bucking Fastard offers more than an unusual story about two inseparable sisters.
Jean and Joan’s shared speech and romantic desire challenge the assumption that every person must experience identity in the same way. The courts and press introduce a second conflict: whether the outside world is trying to protect the sisters or simply force them into a form it finds easier to understand.
Kate and Rooney Mara’s casting gives Herzog an authentic sibling connection at the centre of a deeply unconventional premise.
The completed film will determine whether Jean and Joan are allowed to exist as full characters or become curiosities inside someone else’s story. That is the standard on which it should eventually be reviewed.
For now, this is a spoiler-free story preview based on confirmed festival information.
Official source: Venice Film Festival – Bucking Fastard