Sandra Hüller stars in Fatherland, a black-and-white road-trip film set in post-war Germany, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski.
Pawlikowski directed Ida, which won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in 2013, and Cold War, which earned him a nomination for Best Director in 2019.
Fatherland follows actress and writer Erika Mann and her father, Thomas Mann, as they travel from U.S.-controlled Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar, Germany. Starring alongside Hüeller are Hanns Zischler and August Diehl.
Fatherland premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, where Paweł Pawlikowski won the festival’s Best Director award. The film will be released in U.S. theaters in Fall 2026.
According to the synopsis, the film centers on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann and his daughter, writer and actress Erika. During the summer of 1949, amidst the Cold War, the two take a road trip across Germany in a black Buick, crossing from U.S.-dominated Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar. Returning to Germany after sixteen years in exile in the U.S., Mann faces a divided fatherland and fractures within his own family.
“I have no idea what period we are in. That’s why I did a period film,” said Pawlikowski at the Cannes press conference. “So I try to make films that kind of convey that life is complicated, and there’s no one narrative, and everyone is paradoxical in some way. And try and convey that in the simplest possible way, which cinema can do well through images, scenes, sound…”
Critics have praised the film for its emotional depth and cinematography. The Guardian review called the film “an impossibly elegant, poised historical vignette whose brevity and control can hardly contain its characters’ personal and historical pain.”
Watch the official trailer for Fatherland above.
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