Pawel Pawlikowski’s latest film tells the story of a large German family amid the turmoil of the postwar era. *VATERLAND* was produced in Hesse and won the Best Director Award at Cannes.

After the end of World War II, Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika embark on a journey through a Germany in ruins. Amid euphoric Wagner heirs and literarily sophisticated generals, Germany’s most important writer is courted and sometimes even reviled, while the drama of his own family quietly escalates. A journey into the wounded German soul, which is meant to heal—for Erika and the “Magician,” as his children often called Thomas Mann, it becomes a journey into the depths of their own souls.

Germany/Poland/Italy/France 2026, 82 min., Rating: All Ages

Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Screenplay: Pawel Pawlikowski, Henk Handloegten
Cinematography: Lukasz Zal
Music: Marcin Masecki
Starring Sandra Hüller, Hanns Zischler, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Anna Madeley, David Menkin, Joachim Meyerhoff

DFF – German Film Institute & Film Museum