Fatherland ★★★
Availability: see end of review
Cold War, Cold Father
Cannes-favorite and Oscar-winner Pawel Pawlikowski returns to a subject that has dominated his international films since at least the 2010s: the Cold War (also the title of a 2018 feature of his). In “Fatherland,” Pawlikowski approaches the topic with a historical drama set in Germany in 1949, the year the country was officially cleaved in two. “Loosely inspired” by a real event (as the credits tell us; we had a vigorous discussion as to whether inspiration can ever be described as “loosely” triggered), the narrative follows the illustrious and by then expatriate German writer Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice) as he returns to his “fatherland” to accept the prize named for Germany’s most famous writer, Goethe.
As her father Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) enacts his role as the patriarch,
Erika Mann (Sandra Hüller) breaks into a rare smile.
Mann’s travels begin in Frankfurt, West Germany, where he is feted, gives speeches and interviews, and accepts the prize, and then proceed to Weimar (a complex signifier for Germans) in East Germany, where the feting, speeches, and awards continue. Mann (Hanns Zischler) is accompanied by his eldest child, Erika (Sandra Hüller), whose relationship to her father (another reading of the title, foregrounding Erika’s struggle with patriarchy) is ambivalent, while her perspective on democracy is not.
Erika (Hüller) tolerates stoically and with difficulty the feting of her father in East and West Germany, and the fraternizing with former Nazis, just 4 years after the war's end.
Pawlikowski (he also co-wrote the screenplay) provides Mann and Erika with only spare dialog to express their values and differences. Hüller is the master of reserve and understatement, as exemplified by her roles in 2024’s “Anatomy of a Fall” (she was an Oscar nominee for Best Actress) and “The Zone of Interest” (2023). Her talent for performing repression and interiority—low affect on the surface, festering within, even when she’s saying nothing—brings out the tension between daughter and father.
That phone call scene—shown before the title—is the only one of extended emotional affect in the entire film.
Erika’s progressive, anti-Nazi views are articulated most obviously, though still understated, in a phone call between her and her closest sibling, Klaus, where, tellingly, only her voice is heard. That phone call scene—shown before the title—is the only one of extended emotional affect in the entire film. August Diehl wonderfully portrays the brother, who is reluctant to accompany his father and sister to Germany, which he too fled because of his anti-Nazi views. His emotions are on the surface, expressed with an angst that otherwise erupts in the film in only a few momentary bursts.
The director’s restraint (“Fatherland” earned him a second Cannes Best Director award) extends to his characterization of the larger project in which Mann is engaged. The brief excerpts from the writer’s speeches and interviews expose an almost naïve (looking back from 2026) “one world” view, that for Mann emphasizes the civilizing and unifying role of “culture,” of literature—his forte, of course. (Accepting the Nobel Prize in 1950, William Faulkner made a similar universalist plea.)
Mann treats West and East Germany equally. He responds to questions from an Izvestia (at the time the leading Russian newspaper/aka propaganda machine) reporter, questions designed to provoke a condemnation of capitalism and praise of communism—the 2 ideologies polarizing Germany. Any governing system, Mann says, must mirror man, not the other way around. The writer’s naivete is obvious in an over-determined scene where a dissident bursts into his East German hotel room to tell him that Russia is torturing political prisoners at nearby Buchenwald. Mann (and Erika, who arguably knew better) watch as the dissident is summarily removed and roughed up by Russian agents, seemingly surprised to learn that Russia is not the idealistic cooperative regime it pretends to be. They watch, but they don’t talk about the incident.
Mann, the “great man,” seems incapable, except in tiny gestures, of warmth and empathy for his family.
In addition to themes of a polarizing West versus East, of the evils of Russia cloaked in equalizing communism, of escapees from Nazism living as expatriates, Pawlikowski weaves in family drama. Mann, the “great man,” applauded everywhere in his former homeland, even when he simply steps out of a car, seems incapable, except in tiny gestures, of warmth and empathy for his family. He treats Erika as a functionary for him and his work: she’s his translator, offering no views of her own, and her editing of his speeches consists of deleting a paragraph because it has 3 relative clauses. Mann’s first instinct is to prioritize going to East Germany to accept his award over attending his son’s funeral in Cannes. Instead of arguing with her father, Erika simply leaves the room, emphasizing her unwillingness to directly confront his unacceptable values.
As he arrives at his first stop, the Metropol Hotel in Frankfurt, West Germany,
a gathered crowd cheers Thomas Mann (Zischler) as he steps from his car.
The moments of emotive outburst are so few and brief that they are shocking; and most are Erika’s: a confrontation with an ex-husband; her challenge to pro-Nazi types singing outside her window: “Murderers!” she shouts, evoking both the Nazi horrors that ended a mere 4 years earlier, and her beloved brother’s death. Mann has his emotive moment when, asked by the grandsons of Wagner to support the re-launching of the Bayreuth Festival celebrating the composer whose music was fused with the Nazi regime, he says their mother, a Hitler acolyte, should be arrested and jailed.
The subtlety of the film is enhanced by the decision to shoot in black-and-white and in a 4:3 (almost square) format, trapping characters within the frame and limiting their agency.
The subtlety of the film is enhanced by the decision to shoot in black-and-white and in a 4:3 (almost square) format (used in the director’s “Ida” [2013, winner of Best International Film Feature Oscar 2015] and “Cold War”), both techniques evocative of Italian Neorealism, trapping characters within the frame and limiting their agency. Within that controlling structure is the stunning cinematography of Łukasz Żal, who was behind the camera for “The Zone of Interest” and all of Pawlikowski’s Cold War trilogy.
Pawlikowski has wrestled with the Manichean choice between communism, represented by Russia, and capitalism, represented by the United States. In “Cold War” especially, his critique of Soviet Russia is unrelenting, with a profoundly tragic denouement. The tone of “Fatherland” is different. He offers the third way of Mann’s speeches—a version of one worldism—but hardly makes it seem viable or attractive. That may be because capitalism has morphed into Trumpism and the ‘isms of other autocrats like Hungary’s Victor Orban, and it has produced and nurtured a racist, nativist, imperialist right, losing its luster as the singular alternative to communism.
Lacking the emotional dynamics one might have expected, “Fatherland” will be less engrossing for some viewers, more an intellectual exercise.
The Polish director has many lessons for the West today, lessons communicated with exceptional acting and arresting visual surroundings. Yet, compared to the prior 2, this third film in his trilogy has a simpler plot, less dynamic interchange between characters, more interiority exhibited by the protagonists. Lacking the emotional dynamics one might have expected, “Fatherland” will be less engrossing for some viewers, more an intellectual exercise. It also may be Pawlikowski’s subtlest film, about a fraught relationship between a famous father and his daughter, played out amid the international politics of the postwar era.
She says: I was intrigued by the use of “heimat” in the script (having been fascinated decades ago by the German TV series “Heimat”). Mann responds to the question of “where is home,” that he lives in California, but his heimat is “here” (Germany).
He says: A timely film, as Germany begins to come apart—again.
Date: 2026
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Starring: Hanns Zischler, Sandra Hüller, August Diehl
Countries: A co-product of Poland, Germany, Italy, and France
Languages: German, English, French, Russian (non-English languages subtitled In English)
Runtime: 82 minutes
Other Awards: 3 wins and 11 nominations to date, including at the Cannes Film Festival
Availability: Widely showing in theaters in the West and in Latin America; other international markets will follow. Because MUBI is both the theatrical distributor and a dedicated arthouse streaming platform, the film can be expected to debut on the MUBI Streaming Platform in late November. Availability for rent or purchase on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, and similar platforms will follow the same day or shortly thereafter.
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