Vaterland

A film by Paweł Pawlikowski. From 17 September at the fsk. Preview on 26 August. In German, English, Russian with German subtitles.

[Credits] [Tickets & Termine] [Trailer]

„Like my pre­vious films, VATERLAND also explo­res the turm­oil of histo­ry, exi­le and our deep-sea­ted need for a sen­se of home and belon­ging. Furthermore, the film com­bi­nes a dra­ma­tic his­to­ri­cal moment
with a very spe­cial per­so­nal sto­ry. Yet whilst the cha­rac­ters in IDA and COLD WAR were fic­tion­al, VATERLAND cen­tres on the his­to­ri­cal figu­res of Thomas Mann and his head­strong eldest child­ren, Erika and Klaus, who are ent­an­gled in a com­plex fami­ly love tri­ang­le.
In order to inter­wea­ve the per­so­nal and the his­to­ri­cal in a moving and mutual­ly enri­ching way, we have taken cer­tain liber­ties with regard to the his­to­ri­cal facts and their chro­no­lo­gy. In doing so, we have endea­vou­red to remain true to the emo­tio­nal and intellec­tu­al truth of the sto­ry.
Mann’s return to Germany in 1949 and his attempt to over­co­me the divi­si­on and gro­wing ideo­lo­gi­cal pola­ri­sa­ti­on of his coun­try bear obvious par­al­lels to the pre­sent day. The old para­digm is dead, the old rules no lon­ger app­ly, and in their place two cru­de, mutual­ly exclu­si­ve nar­ra­ti­ves are emer­ging. Narratives that gene­ra­li­se ever­y­thing, that suck the oxy­gen out of the air, that cor­ner you and force you to take sides, and that gra­du­al­ly make it impos­si­ble to see cle­ar­ly and speak free­ly. For Mann, the only defence against this ideo­lo­gi­cal reduc­tion was art – the ‘poe­tic gaze’ he men­ti­ons in one of his spee­ches, the open eye for the com­ple­xi­ty and para­do­xes of life.
VATERLAND brings tog­e­ther many ele­ments, tel­ling its sto­ry through a simp­le yet con­den­sed cine­ma­tic lan­guage; it unfolds in haun­ting images and striking sce­nes, lea­ving the audi­ence space to feel and reflect.” (Pawel Pawlokowski)

Credits:

PL/DE/IT/FR 2026, 82 mins. German, English, Russian (ori­gi­nal ver­si­on with German sub­tit­les)
Director: Paweł Pawlikowski
Cinematography: Łukasz Żal
Editing: Piotr Wójcik, Paweł Pawlikowski
Starring: Hanns Zischler, Sandra Hüller, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Joachim Meyerhoff, Fritzi Haberlandt, Milan Peschel

Trailer:

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