{"id":959902,"date":"2026-05-14T19:07:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T19:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/959902\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T19:07:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T19:07:22","slug":"fatherland-review-sandra-huller-leads-pawel-pawlikowskis-latest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/959902\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Fatherland’ Review: Sandra H\u00fcller Leads Pawel Pawlikowski’s Latest"},"content":{"rendered":"

The aching black-and-white, the Academy aspect ratio, the streak of fatalism running between dueling identities \u2014 you know when you\u2019re in a Pawel Pawlikowski<\/a> movie. His latest, \u201cFatherland<\/a>,\u201d takes us on a melancholy road trip from U.S.-operated Frankfurt to Soviet-run Weimar in Germany with \u201cThe Magic Mountain\u201d author Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra H\u00fcller<\/a>) in 1949.<\/p>\n

About as sentimental as any film<\/a> by the Polish auteur gets \u2014 which is to say not at all, despite one long-delayed tear finally shed \u2014 it\u2019s another austere, rigorously crafted odyssey through European postwar regret. Stylistically aligned with \u201cIda\u201d and \u201cCold War<\/a>\u201d to perhaps complete a loose trilogy, \u201cFatherland\u201d opens an intentionally narrow window onto the strained relationship between Mann and Erika after his 16 years of exile in the United States. Pawlikowski\u2019s elliptical style \u2014 keen on empty spaces, minimal dialogue, and crisp cutting \u2014 has its limits in terms of achieving an emotional payoff, but the actors\u2019 understated turns make for a captivating (and, at 82 minutes, miraculously short) elegy to a lost homeland at the kickoff of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

\"LOS<\/a> \"Teenage<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cFatherland\u201d begins in, of all places, Cannes<\/a>, a glamorous swath of coastal cityscape that is about as far a cry as you can get from the postwar ruinousness happening in Germany, north of France. That\u2019s where Klaus Mann (August Diehl), Thomas\u2019 homosexual Communist son, would end up taking his own life, but a furtive phone call between twin brother and sister reveals both their closeness as well as the fractures in a broken family dynamic. Erika is living in the Palisades with her father, working as his assistant, when he is summoned back to Germany for the first time since he left his home country in 1933, strongly opposed to Nazi dictatorship. He\u2019s due to receive the Goethe prize, a symbol of lasting German culture amid a country now divided between East and West and scrambling to retain its now-stained identity.<\/p>\n

The road trip beginning in Frankfurt and ending in Weimar, where a celebration of Goethe\u2019s 200th birthday is set to take place, becomes the setting for father and daughter to perhaps ease the strains in their relationship. H\u00fcller plays Erika as a kind of doting clerk who has spent more than a decade defending his reputation against accusations of Communism and more (Mann was also, like his son, understood to be homosexual, though this film doesn\u2019t dig into that aspect of the \u201cDeath in Venice\u201d author\u2019s life). But there\u2019s also simmering resentment, which starts to quietly boil over once they learn terrible news about Klaus. What about her own life, as more than just somebody\u2019s daughter? (Erika had a rich career as a writer and war correspondent, but that\u2019s for another film.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s go home,\u201d Erika says at one point to her father on their journey. \u201cWhere is that?,\u201d he says. Indeed, Zischler\u2019s Mann is a lost soul, and these two, to quote Nick Cave, are a bit \u201clike two lost suitcases on a carousel going nowhere.\u201d Fans of Pawlikowski\u2019s style will feel coldly, cozily at home in how their emotionally stingy relationship plays out. There\u2019s also a kind of, to use a crass comparison, \u201cMidnight in Paris\u201d of burned-out revolutionaries and period famous types that rolls out as they brush up against various public figures on their trip. That includes a terse run-in with her bitter Nazi husband Gustaf Gr\u00fcndgens (at this point in time she\u2019s now married to poet W.H. Auden, as the script conspicuously points out) at a fancy cocktail party, and a car ride with German Communist author Johannes R. Becher (Devid Striesow).<\/p>\n

Erika also definitely has a sapphic frisson with Associated Press journalist Betty Knox (Anna Madeley), who is in attendance at the press conference that opens the Manns\u2019 Eurotour. Pawlikowski loyalists will also appreciate a cameo from \u201cCold War\u201d star Joanna Kulig (who in that film was playing a version of the filmmaker\u2019s mother) as a lounge singer.<\/p>\n

Shooting Poland for Germany, Pawlikowski\u2019s regular cinematographer \u0141ukasz \u017bal follows the Manns\u2019 black Buick through a haunted, guilt-ridden Germany from a characteristically chilly remove. That Pawlikowski is telling a story of actual historical figures proves a fascinating challenge for a filmmaker who has previously invented characters to serve as historical reminders.<\/p>\n

But that also means that he doesn\u2019t quite psychologically penetrate either of the Manns as immersively as his previous work. H\u00fcller\u2019s performance is typically strong and rooted in cold stares and silences, adding to an already amazing year for the German actress between achieving blockbuster exposure in \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d and winning the Berlinale best actress prize for her performance in another black-and-white period drama, \u201cRose<\/a>.\u201d Stacked against those turns, though, this may not be the role she\u2019ll be best remembered for this year, even as her performance is as masterful and airtight as ever.<\/p>\n

What exactly the endgame of this road trip is doesn\u2019t quite crystallize onscreen, leaving gaps and missing bookends that might encourage you to brush up on your European postwar history. To chisel a movie aesthetically within an inch of its life sometimes means the life inside gets lost in the process \u2014 though the Manns\u2019 stopover in Soviet-occupied Weimar includes a briefly harrowing reminder of the Russian prisons happening next door to conference rooms and banquet halls in which socialism has begun to install itself. Pawlikowski is always best working in a more personal register, but \u201cFatherland,\u201d even stripped of historical context, does finally end on a poignant grace note of healing between a father and his daughter. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Grade: B<\/p>\n

\u201cFatherland\u201d premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. MUBI will release it at a later date.<\/p>\n

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film reviews<\/a><\/strong> and critical thoughts? Subscribe here<\/a><\/strong> to our newsletter In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014 all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The aching black-and-white, the Academy aspect ratio, the streak of fatalism running between dueling identities \u2014 you know…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":959903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5839,77,266125,10841,3063,268102,6082,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-959902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-cannes","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fatherland","11":"tag-festivals","12":"tag-film","13":"tag-pawel-pawlikowski","14":"tag-reviews","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116574504011731212","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/959903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}