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 revered, Nobel prize-winning German writer who fled his homeland on the eve of the war and – in 1949 – made a well publicised return to receive the Goethe prize. The film finds him travelling across Germany with his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller), as he controversially makes plans to attend celebrations in both Frankfurt in West Germany and Weimar in the East – with both sides of the newly split country desperate to claim him as their own.

Over the course of their journey, we regularly find the pair driving past bombed out buildings and destroyed infrastructure, and the film makes the case that – barely four years on from Nazi rule – it is not just physically but emotionally and morally that the country and its citizens continue to lie in ruin.

Pawlikowski is operating in similar aesthetic territory to his aforementioned previous effort (and its 2013 predecessor Ida). Lukasz Żal's sumptuous black and white photography once again artfully transports us to a Europe still reckoning with the horrors of World War II, while the use of music – from lounge singers to Soviet choirs – is also key, both in terms of establishing the film's atmosphere and communicating the gulf between the divided nation.

Narratively, it's a very slight film – barely reaching 80 minutes – but it's also a cerebral and thematically rich one. Early on, at a press conference, Mann is asked where he considers to be his home, and he responds that although in a literal sense the answer is California, the question of where he belongs is a far more demanding matter.

It is that question which the film is intent on probing, and although Mann uses his acceptance speeches to call attention to the progressive German values espoused in the work of Goethe, it is clear from the cross-country trip that such a Germany no longer exists and perhaps never can again, a fact that Erika seems all too aware of. Their true home is a thing of the past.

One of the most striking scenes is the very first – a short vignette that finds Mann's son Klaus (August Diehl) nihilistically musing about his mindset on a phone call with Erika, with whom he has always been close. "I don't believe in anything any more" he tells her, adding that he "can't remember the last time I felt anything". It's the only time we see Klaus during the film, but his shadow – and his words – loom large over the whole piece, especially after a major revelation later in the runtime.

Another highlight comes at the Frankfurt party to celebrate Mann's award, where he and Erika find themselves brushing shoulders with members of German polite society who not so long ago had been content to sell their souls to fascism. "Imagine what they were up to four years ago," Erika voices at one point. She also has a run-in with her ex-husband Gustaf Gründgens, an actor now making unconvincing excuses for his close relationship with Hermann Göring.

Hüller – who, in 2026 alone, already has a Berlinale acting prize and a role in one of the year's most popular blockbusters to her name – is unsurprisingly stupendous. Her Erika moves from moments of steely resolve to those of deep vulnerability, and she displays the pain of navigating her broken fatherland and complicated family dynamic with great subtlety and intelligence.

If there's a downside, it's that although Fatherland barely hits a false note during its brief run-time, perhaps there is a sense at times that it's a little too economical; this is a hugely effective sketch which could perhaps have benefitted from being built out a little further. Still, it can't be denied that Pawlikowski skilfully crafts a bleakly atmospheric tale that leaves the audience with plenty to chew on.

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