A trio of siblings come together and fall heartbreakingly apart in this agonisingly authentic chamber piece from writer-director Azazel Jacobs (French Exit). Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen are the eponymous sisters, tending to their elderly father in his New York home during his dying days and winding each other up no end in the process.

Lyonne plays shellshocked stoner Rachel who shares the apartment with their father and has been caring for him in her sisters’ absence. Coon is the brusque and compulsively critical Katie, while Olsen is the spaced, diplomatic and sometimes dementedly mumsy Christina. Jay O Sanders plays patriarch Vincent, remaining offscreen in the main, with the film focusing on his daughters’ fragile dynamic.

Jacobs brilliantly captures the combustibility of the situation, as Rachel deals with a sibling invasion and these hugely contrasting characters attempt to process bewildering medical information and exist in close quarters. The director employs a Cassavetes-like approach, with theatrical, showy monologues making way for something more raw and disarmingly real. Layers are exquisitely peeled back to reveal the family’s fraught and painful history and the sources of their grievances, but it’s empathetic and funny too.

His Three Daughters is spectacularly well-acted by the actors in question, with Coon and Lyonne in particular playing to their strengths and making memorable adversaries. Sensitively handled throughout, this talky, confrontational film illuminates a common and challenging process as it gets to grips with grief, guilt and dysfunction.

His Three Daughters is in cinemas from Friday 6 September and available on Netflix from Friday 20 September.