FATHERLAND Trailer: Sandra Hüller Takes a Post-WWII Road Trip With Thomas Mann in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Profound Drama
Oscar-winning director Paweł Pawlikowski (Ida; Cold War) is back at the helm with a new historical stunner shot in his signature black-and-white. Fatherland centers on life in post-World War II Germany through the eyes of legendary author Thomas Mann (Hans Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) as they return to their home country in ruins after living in exile for years in the United States. As they embark on a road trip from West to East Germany at the height of the Cold War, they reckon with how much their country of origin has changed while contending with their deeply fractured family, which includes Erika’s twin brother Klaus (August Diehl).
Pawlikowski co-wrote the film with Babylon Berlin co-creator Henk Handloegten, and reteams with his cinematographer Łukasz Źal. Following its buzzy Cannes premiere and Best Director win for Pawlikowski, MUBI will release Fatherland theatrically in the United States this fall.
As the official synopsis reads:
FATHERLAND centers on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) – actress, writer and rally driver. Set 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. For the first time since the war, Mann returns to his native Germany, having made the difficult decision to flee for the safety of the US.
Savina Petkova wrote in her Cannes review, “The script written by Pawlikowski and Henk Handloegten paints Thomas Mann as a figure upon whom the contemporaries project their political hopes, as well as doubts, inviting the audience to do the same… He, however, is very much a reflection of his times and family, and this mirroring game makes Fatherland feel less a memoir than a fable. [Zischler] towers as an effigy whose poetic sense of justice, voiced in the two speeches we see in the film, could perhaps promise a stable identity for a divided nationstate. Hüller, ever so razor-sharp in her performance, alternates between being acerbic and soft at times, embodying the disjointed family as a whole. As if to preserve the riddle at the heart of the film, one scene has a journalist ask Thomas Mann “Where is home?”, to which Mann replies with the important distinction between “home” and “Heimat” (belonging) without giving an actual answer. The film’s title, then, can be read as a limbo of time and space, since home is just as much a myth as is a nation.”
Check out the official trailer and poster below.
