In "The Yellow Birds", a war drama directed by Alexandre Moors, Aniston portrays the mother of a deceased soldier, alongside Alden Ehrenreich, Tye Sheridan, Jack Huston, and Toni Collette. While she said she does not "normally gravitate toward being in war films", she made an exception because the film was "written so beautifully and in such a way [she] had never experienced". The film, first presented at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, received a VOD release in June 2018. The "Los Angeles Times" wrote in its review: "Toni Collette and Jennifer Aniston as the soldiers' quite different but equally concerned mothers, deliver uniformly naturalistic performances".