FATHERLAND | OJCZYZNA

POLAND, GERMANY, ITALY, FRANCE | 2026 | COLOR | DCP | 82’ | GERMAN, ENGLISH, FRENCH, RUSSIAN

In 1949, sixteen years after his forced self-exile to the United States, the writer Thomas Mann returned to his war-torn homeland to attend two award ceremonies held in his honour. He is accompanied by his daughter, Erika. And together, in a black Buick, they travel through a deeply wounded and divided Germany: from Frankfurt, Goethe’s birthplace, to Weimar, where the great German poet died. Amidst patriotic marches and pompous ceremonies, Mann is confronted not only with the physical and moral ruins of an entire country but also with an unexpected family tragedy, that leaves his daughter searching in vain for some emotional response from him. The film runs for eighty-two minutes. Yet rarely has so much been packed into so brief a runtime. The individual’s relationship with history and the artist’s debt to it, the bitter ironies and disillusionments of the tumultuous 20th century, a post-war reality that seems so distant in time, yet so chillingly close to our own present day—all seep into the film’s dazzling tableaux vivants, like the jarring pieces of a desperate world. Behind the despair, however, Pawlikowski finds a glimmer of hope. Despite the adversities, in defiance of all barbarity, civilization will survive. “Homeland” won the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival and is Poland’s official entry for Best International Film at the next Oscars. Loukas Katsikas

DIRECTOR: Paweł Pawlikowski
SCREENWRITERS: Paweł Pawlikowski, Hendrik Handloegten
DoP: Łukasz Żal
EDITORS: Paweł Pawlikowski, Piotr Wójcik
PRINCIPAL CAST: Sandra Hüller, Hanns Zischler, August Diehl

PAWEŁ PAWLIKOWSKI
Polish director and writer, born in Warsaw in 1957.  He studied literature and philosophy in London and Oxford. He started making documentary films for the BBC in the late 1980s. “Ida” won the 2015 Foreign Language Academy Award and five European Film Awards among various accolades. Cold War brought Pawlikowski on as a nominee for Best Director at the Oscars. 

FILMOGRAPHY
2026 Fatherland
2018 Cold War
2013 Ida
2011 The Woman in the Fifth
2004 My Summer of Love
2000 Last Resort
1998 The Stringer