CANNES – The phrase “you can never go home again” has worked its way into the American vernacular for almost a century. A riff off the title of a classic 1940 Thomas Wolfe novel, it is also a prevailing theme in Paweł Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland,” a world premiere at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. A movie that centers on another prominent 20th-century author, Thomas Mann, and his daughter Erika Mann, no slouch herself, as he returns to Germany for the first time since the end of World War II. A journey that in some ways may be more timely than even Pawlikowski or his co-screenwriter Henk Handloegten ever envisioned.
“Fatherland” begins, however, with Thomas’ son, Klaus (August Diehl), on the phone with his sister. He’s depressed and disillusioned with the world. He sarcastically remarks that you’re either a communist or on the side of “Mickey Mouse.” There is no in between. Erika (Sandra Huller, stellar as always) seeks assurances that he’s going to still meet her and their father in Frankfurt. He says he will, but we soon learn he has no such plans.
Erika has been in Los Angeles with her father (Hanns Zischler, wonderfully understated) and mother, preparing the one-time Nobel prize winner for his first visit to Germany since fleeing the Nazi regime in 1933. Mann is set to visit both the American and Russian-controlled portions of the country to celebrate his own contributions to German culture on the 200th birthday of one of the cultural pillars of German history, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. There will be ceremonies. There will be dinners. And there will be a press conference with prominent journalists from across the world in attendance.
Within hours of arriving in Frankfurt, Erika is appalled by the influential members of the German upper class who are thriving despite their complicity during the Nazi regime. Only four years after the end of the war, they dance to a jazz band (featuring a smile-inducing cameo from Pawlikowski’s “Cold War” muse Joanna Kulig), echoing the false freedom of Germany’s own roaring twenties, as though the previous three decades never happened. She’s frustrated over her father’s seeming indifference to these former fascists and can not control herself when her ex-husband, Gustaf Gründgens (Joachim Meyerhoff), a Nazi sympathizer, attempts to confront her at the post-reception gala. Unbeknownst to her, the Senior Mann is also unimpressed with his former countrymen. After brothers Wolfgang and Wieland Wagner suggest that Mann assist them in restoring a local Opera House, he barely hesitates when he retorts that the building should be burned to the ground and their mother put on trial for war crimes.
Erika soon learns that Klaus never made it to Frankfurt. And his fate hits her like a hammer.
Still processing the loss, the Manns head to Weinmar, in what would soon be known as East Germany. These differences between the recently divided territories are striking. While the West Germans embrace their American overlords (the Manns are provided a shiny new Buick to use), the Russians and new German Democratic Officials put on a hard sell for Thomas to return to Germany. They try to suggest that some of Goethe’s beliefs were Marxist, fete Mann in buildings that appear to be barely standing, and provide music by multiple choirs singing newly crafted patriotic anthems. The streets are almost empty. The local restaurant is a shell of itself. When a visitor attempts to warn them of a camp with over a thousand political prisoners, they are quickly apprehended by the authorities. His fate for sharing this? Unknown. When Thomas is taken to Goethe’s home in Weimar, the photographer snapping candids of of his visit only emphasizes how the East Germans are using him as a propaganda tool.
Before they depart Weinmar, Erika ditches their motorcade. She drives them to a decrepit church where they discover two men attempting to repair a pipe organ. As the Manns sit and take in the spectacle, the organist begins to play a signature Bach overture. And Thomas and Erika’s grief begins to unfurl. A grief not only for the loss of their son and brother, but of a nation they can no longer recognize, on either side of the Iron Curtain.
Reuniting with a majority of his “Ida” and “Cold War” collaborators, a 1:37 aspect ratio, and cinematographer Lukasz Zal’s masterful black and white compositoins, Pawlikowski, whether intentional or not, has crafted a trilogy of films that chronicle the painful reverberations of the Second World War. With “Fatherland,” he’s also holding up a mirror. A reflection on today and, more likely, the near future. How will you treat those complicit in war crimes and humanitarian horrors? How will you grieve a world that is gone? Or will you grieve at all? [A-/B+]
Look for complete coverage from the 2026 Cannes Film Festival on The Playlist.
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