Fatherland Review: Sandra Hüller Is Stupendous in a Narratively Slight but Thematically Rich Drama
Sandra Hüller’s performance as Erika Mann drew early Oscar buzz as Pawlikowski returned after an eight-year hiatus.
- On Thursday, Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski premiered his latest feature film, Fatherland, at the 79th annual Cannes Film Festival at the Palais des Festivals in France.
- Set during the 1949 Cold War, the black-and-white drama follows Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann, played by Hanns Zischler, and his daughter Erika, portrayed by Sandra Hüller, on a road trip across fractured Germany.
- According to Variety, the audience rewarded Hüller's performance with a 5-minute standing ovation. This marks Pawlikowski's return to feature filmmaking after an eight-year hiatus following his 2018 film, Cold War.
- Competing at the festival, Fatherland is the shortest feature in the lineup, with theatrical distributor Mubi holding rights across North America, the UK, and additional global territories.
- Early critical reception positions the film for the upcoming Oscar race, with critics praising Fatherland as 'peak Pawlikowski' and noting Pawlikowski's artistic discipline in exploring themes of history, exile, and family legacy.
22 Articles
22 Articles
Cannes (France), 15 May (EFE).- Polish Pawel Pawlikowski presented this Friday at the Cannes competition, ‘Fatherland’, a film that makes a portrait of the desolation of Germany after World War II through the family of Thomas Mann, a way to explain to viewers “that that time was very complicated and that things are not white or black” Very well received at the festival, where critics consider it the best film seen so far in the competition, ‘Fat…
Fatherland review: Sandra Hüller is stupendous in a narratively slight but thematically rich drama
Eight years have passed since Pawel Pawlikowski's magnificent Cold War earned him a best director nomination at the Oscars, and the Polish director has finally returned with his next effort. Fatherland – which has just premiered In Competition at the Cannes Film Festival – is another finely-tuned, typically accomplished piece of work from the internationally acclaimed auteur.The subject this time around is Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler), the rever…
Prestigious: Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler show their moving drama "Fatherland" in Cannes. It is about Thomas Mann's journey through the bombed post-war Germany and the question whether the country of the concentration camps can ever be home again.
The new work of Polish Pawel Pawlikowski is a groundbreaking meditation on Europe, with Hanns Zischler and Sandra Hüller in the cast.
Fatherland begins with a bitter and desperate monologue by Klaus Mann weeks before he committed suicide in 1949 in a villa right here in Cannes. On the other end of the phone is his sister Erika in the family home in Los Angeles with that fatherland to whom the title refers, the writer Thomas Mann, who has been exiled in the United States with his family since the coming to power of Nazism. What follows that prologue is a concise, elegant and mo…
This Thursday evening in Competition in Cannes, Pawel Pawlikowski revisits Thomas Mann's family through the suicide of his son Klaus and the look of his daughter Erika. A masterpiece on Germany from the post-war period. ...
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