"September Says" Trailer: Ariane Labed Delivers a Haunting Directorial Debut with a Gothic Sisterhood Tale, Starring Mia Tharia and Pascale Kann

The Attenberg actress-turned-filmmaker adapts Daisy Johnson’s eerie novel Sisters into a tense psychological drama starring Mia Tharia, Pascale Kann, and Rakhee Thakrar.

French actress Ariane Labed first came onto the scene with a couple of Greek films, Attenberg (2010) and Alps (2011), both produced by surrealist Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, with the latter also written and directed by him. Labed, who later married Yorgos in 2013, displayed a unique sensibility as an actress, often embracing unconventional roles and gravitating toward more fringe characters. Now, she’s applying that same approach as she steps behind the camera for her feature debut as a writer and director.

The film is called September Says, and from the looks of things, Labed may have taken a page from her husband’s playbook, bringing a touch of Yorgos' signature bizarreness into her own filmmaking style. There's certainly a Dogtooth vibe in the film’s newly released trailer. Watch it above.

In the trailer for September Says, it starts off as a seemingly offbeat coming-of-age tale about two British sisters, July and September, grappling with the hardships of adolescence and feeling like outcasts who don’t quite belong. They are viciously bullied at school, but that doesn’t stop them from taking it out on their fellow classmates. One sister even goes so far as to cut off a classmate’s ponytail. From the start, it’s clear that these sisters are troublemakers, though their outbursts might be seen as somewhat justified.

But then the trailer takes a dark turn. There’s a mood shift. The sisters start playing an increasingly bizarre game of Simon Says—though they’ve changed the name to September Says. We assume July must do exactly what her sister September commands. At first, the game seems innocent enough, a simple children’s pastime. But it slowly becomes more unnerving and frightening as the two sisters grow angrier with each other. At the end of the day, some siblings usually find themselves at each other's throats when they spend too much time together.

"If only one of us could remain, it would be you," one of the sisters says in the trailer, giving us a really uneasy feeling about this film's conclusion.

September Says stars newcomers Mia Tharia and Pascale Kann as the two sisters, July and September, while Rakhee Thakrar (from Netflix’s Sex Education and Wonka) co-stars as the sisters' single mother, Sheela.

The film is based on the novel Sisters by British author Daisy Johnson, which was honored with The New York Times label of "a notable book of the year."

September Says made its world premiere last summer at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it earned mostly positive reviews from critics. Here are a couple of snippets:

"September Says captures the fragility of adolescence with a preciseness and intimacy, brought to life by performances from Mia Tharia and Pascale Kann."

— Tim Grierson, Screen International

"Ariane Labed has adapted Daisy Johnson’s gothic novel, Sisters, into an unsettling modern fable that’s fired by the tension between the siblings’ claustrophobic bond and their surreal interactions with the world at large."
★★★★☆

— Ed Potton, The Times (UK)

"An elegantly unmoored tale of two sisters that, in its tart and tense examination of codependency and the isolation it breeds, shares a kinship with Athina Rachel Tsangari’s haunting Attenberg and the darkly absurdist satires of Yorgos Lanthimos."

— Isaac Feldberg, RogerEbert.com

September Says is scheduled to open in U.K. cinemas on February 21, followed by an exclusive streaming release on MUBI.

No word yet on whether the film will receive a U.S. theatrical release, but we assume it will have a worldwide release on MUBI sometime later this year.