Fatherland

Hanns Zischler and Sandra Hüller play writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika, crossing a divided post-war Germany in Paweł Pawlikowski’s sublime black-and-white road movie.

In the summer of 1949, Nobel Prize winning author Thomas Mann returns to Germany after being in exile for sixteen years to receive a prestigious literally prize. Accompanying him on his road trip from US occupied Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimer is his daughter Erika, an actor, rally driver and author in her own right.

As they travel across a Germany neither of them recognises, father and daughter find a country caught between East and West, where old loyalties have been quietly buried rather than forgotten. Along the way, they’re forced to reckon with the ghosts that haunt their complicated bond, and with the grief they carry with them.

Curator’s note
Paweł Pawlikowski follows 2013’s Ida and 2018’s Cold War with another exquisite black-and-white portrait of post-war Europe. Winner of Best Director at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, Fatherland distils in its brief 82-minute runtime a nation trying to untangle itself from a dark, not-too-distant history and the lingering fault lines it has left on its people.

Bearing witness is Thomas Mann, a figure whose literary work and legacy have long held a mirror to the German soul.