Poland, Germany, Italy, France
2026 | 82 min. | Fiction

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 a 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 style – the themes of identity, family, love and guilt amid the turmoil and confusion of post-war Europe.

Directed by: Paweł Pawlikowski
Written by: Paweł Pawlikowski, Henk Handloegten
Produced by: Our Films, Extreme Emotions, Nine Hours, Chapter 2
Cinematography: Łukasz Żal
Editing: Paweł Pawlikowski, Piotr Wójcik
Production Design: Katarzyna Sobańska, Marcel Sławiński
Costume Design: Aleksandra Staszko
Make-Up & Hair: Waldemar Pokromski
Sound: Lars Ginzel, Tarn Willers
Visual Effects: Massimo Cipollina
Casting: Nina Haun, Magdalena Szwarcbart, Karen Lindsay Stewart
Cast: Hanns Zischler (Thomas Mann), Sandra Hüller (Erika Mann), August Diehl (Klaus Mann), Devid Striesow (Johannes R. Becher), Anna Madeley (Betty Knox)

Statement of the director:
Like my previous films, FATHERLAND deals with the turmoils of history, with exile and with our transcendental need for home and belonging. It also brings together a dramatic historical moment with a very particular human story. But while the characters in IDA and COLD WAR were invented, at the centre of FATHERLAND we have the historical figures of Thomas Mann and his wayward twins, Erika and Klaus, locked in a triangular family drama. Trying to fuse the personal and the historical in a poignant, mutually enhancing way, we took some liberties with historical facts and their chronology, while trying to stay faithful to the emotional and intellectual truth of the matter ...
Mann’s return to Germany in 1949 and his attempt to transcend the division and the growing ideological polarisation of his country has obvious contemporary resonances; the old paradigm is dead, the old rules no longer apply, and in their place emerge two crude, mutually exclusive narratives. Narratives which flatten everything, suck oxygen out of the air, corner you into taking sides, and slowly make it impossible to see straight and speak freely. For Mann, the only defense against this ideological reduction was art – the “poetic gaze” which he mentions in one of his speeches, the open eye for the complexities and paradoxes of life. FATHERLAND brings together many things, but tries to speak simply, in a distilled way, unfolding in graphic images and concentrated scenes, leaving the audience space to feel and imagine.

Production:
Our Films
https://www.ourfilms.it/

Extreme Emotions

Nine Hours
https://ninehours.org/

Chapter 2

World Sales:
The Match Factory
https://www.the-match-factory.com/