FATHERLAND New Trailer: Pawel Pawlikowski’s Newest Black-and-White Drama Arrives in October
Oscar-winning director Paweł Pawlikowski (Ida; Cold War) is back at the helm with a stunning new 20th-century-set drama shot in his signature black-and-white. Fatherland centers on life in post-World War II where Erika Mann (Sandra Hüller) accompanies her father, famed writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler), back 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).
Following its run at upcoming fall festivals, including TIFF and NYFF, and just in time for awards season, MUBI will release it in New York and LA on October 23, before expanding to further cities.
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 nation-state. 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.”
See the trailer and poster below.
