Two weeks after becoming the first Irish woman in the history of the Academy Awards to win Best Actress, Jessie Buckley is heading straight into one of the most anticipated film productions of 2026.
She is set to star in Three Incestuous Sisters, the new film from Italian director Alice Rohrwacher, alongside Dakota Johnson, Saoirse Ronan, and Josh O’Connor. Principal photography begins this month, April 2026.
The casting was announced by Deadline on February 27, making Buckley’s addition the last piece confirmed before the 98th Oscars ceremony.
She walked away with the award on March 15 for her performance as Agnes Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, sweeping every major precursor including the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, SAG-AFTRA Actor Awards, and Critics Choice.
She beat Rose Byrne, Kate Hudson, Renate Reinsve, and Emma Stone to the prize. In her speech at the Dolby Theatre, she dedicated the award to “the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart,” it happened to be Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom.
She is now, without a break, one of the three titular sisters.
What Is Three Incestuous Sisters?
Three Incestuous Sisters is a loose adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s 2005 illustrated novel of the same name. Niffenegger is best known as the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife.
The screenplay has been co-written by Rohrwacher and Ottessa Moshfegh, the novelist behind Eileen, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and the screenplay for Bones and All.
Because the film is described by all parties as a loose adaptation with significant departures from the source material, plot details are being kept under wraps.
The book itself, for reference, is a gothic adult fairy tale told largely through illustrations, Niffenegger is a visual artist as well as a novelist, and the book was compared to Edward Gorey on publication.
Its official synopsis describes three very different sisters. One beautiful, one smart, one talented. They live together in isolation near the sea before eventually moving to Paris, where they encounter a lighthouse keeper’s son who profoundly affects each of them.
A melodrama of sibling rivalry builds as one sister is consumed by jealousy over another’s passionate love affair, escalating toward a climax of sabotage, shame, and despair.
Whether Rohrwacher and Moshfegh retain any of that structure or use it purely as a departure point is unknown. The A.V. Club observed that the lighthouse keeper’s son role, if it appears, seems likely to belong to O’Connor.
The film is financed and produced by Indian Paintbrush through Steven Rales. Dakota Johnson and Ro Donnelly are producing for TeaTime Pictures. Rohrwacher is also producing.
Who Is Alice Rohrwacher?
Alice Rohrwacher is 42 years old, born in Fiesole, Italy, and has been building one of the most singular filmographies in contemporary international cinema since her debut Heavenly Body in 2011.
Her second feature, The Wonders, won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2014. Her third, Happy as Lazzaro, won Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2018 and was named one of the decade’s best films by numerous critics.
Her most recent film, La Chimera, premiered in competition at Cannes in 2023, starred O’Connor opposite Isabella Rossellini, and was named one of the five best international films of 2023 by the National Board of Review.
It received widespread release in the US in 2024 to exceptional reviews and cemented her reputation as one of the finest working directors anywhere in the world.
Rohrwacher’s films share a consistent preoccupation, the tension between the visible and the invisible, the mythic and the mundane, the past pressing into the present, and she tends to work in ways that blur genre boundaries and resist clean categorization.
Her collaboration with Moshfegh, whose literary sensibility is similarly interested in psychological darkness, interiority, and characters who make other people deeply uncomfortable, is one of the more intriguing creative pairings the industry has put together in years.
She received the 2026 European Film Academy Achievement in World Cinema Award. She is represented by UTA.
The Cast And Where They Are Now
Jessie Buckley is 36, born in Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland. She trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her film career accelerated through Wild Rose, The Lost Daughter, for which she received her first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actress, Women Talking, and now Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel imagining the inner life of Agnes Shakespeare, William’s wife, in the wake of the death of their son Hamnet.
She has a husband, Freddie Sorensen, and an eight-month-old daughter. Her most recent release before Three Incestuous Sisters begins filming is The Bride, directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and also starring Christian Bale.
Dakota Johnson is 36, born in Austin, Texas, daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson.
She is best known for the Fifty Shades franchise, but her more recent work, Suspiria, The Lost Daughter, Daddio opposite Sean Penn, Materialists opposite Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, has substantially reshaped her critical reputation.
Materialists, released in 2025, was directed by Celine Song, who made Past Lives, and received strong reviews.
Johnson is producing Three Incestuous Sisters through her TeaTime Pictures company alongside Ro Donnelly, making this a project she has championed from both sides of the camera.
Saoirse Ronan is 31, born in New York to Irish parents and raised in County Carlow, Ireland. She has four Oscar nominations, Atonement, Brooklyn, Lady Bird, and Little Women, and is regarded as one of the finest actresses of her generation.
Her most recent film, The Outrun, earned her critical acclaim. She is currently in production on Sam Mendes’ still-untitled Beatles biographical film, in which she plays Linda McCartney, wife of Paul, alongside Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, and Harris Dickinson as the four Beatles.
Josh O’Connor is 30, born in Cheltenham, England. His international profile rose dramatically through his performance as Prince Charles in The Crown and exploded globally with his lead performance in La Chimera and his two turns in Challengers opposite Zendaya and Mike Faist.
He is now one of the most sought-after actors in the world. He was most recently seen in Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out film, and will next appear opposite Emily Blunt in Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day.
His reunion with Rohrwacher makes Three Incestuous Sisters their second collaboration.
Three Incestuous Sisters begins principal photography in April 2026. No release date or distributor has been announced.
