FATHERLAND

Poland, Germany, Italy, France, 2026

82 min

Award for Best Director, Festival de Cannes 2026

Director: Paweł Pawlikowski

Screenplay: Paweł Pawlikowski, Henk Handloegten 

Cinematography: Lukasz Zal

Cast: Sandra Hüller, Hanns Zischler, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, 

Synopsis: 

FATHERLAND centres on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika, actress, writer and rally driver. In the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, father and daughter embark on a challenging and emotional road trip in a black Buick taking them across a Germany in ruins – from US dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar. Returning home after sixteen years of exile in the US, Thomas Mann has to face not only a divided fatherland, but also deep fracture within his own family.

With FATHERLAND, Pawlikowski picks up where he left off with his award-winning Ida and Cold War, exploring – in his elliptic, distilled way – the themes of identity, family, love and guilt amid the turmoil and confusion of post-war Europe.

Paweł Pawlikowski

Multi awarded Pawel Pawlikowski is a Polish filmmaker, who garnered much acclaim for award-winning documentaries in the 1990s and for his feature films Last Resort (2001) and My Summer of Love (2004) which both won a BAFTA, and many other awards. In 2011, he made a film loosely adapted from Douglas Kennedy's novel The Woman in the Fifth. In 2015 his masterpiece Ida, won the Academy Award for Foreign Language Film, becoming the first Polish film to do so. His most recent film, Cold War, earned him the Best Director Prize at the Festival de Cannes 2018 and three nominations for Best Director, Best Photography and Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards. It also won five awards at the 2018 European Film Awards including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenwriter.