At the height of the Cold War, the writer Thomas Mann and his daughter—actress, writer, and rally driver—Erika embark on a road trip in a black Buick cruiser across a divided Germany in ruins, traveling from the Allied-occupied city of Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar.
"At just 80 minutes, Fatherland is small but perfectly formed and packed with more ideas and infused with more heartbreak than most overlong arthouse epics... There is so much to savour in Pawlikowski’s exquisitely well-judged drama... It’s a moving film, too..."
Kevin Maher, The Times
"Bracingly intense... Fatherland [is] a sleek portal into the exact middle of the 20th century: one that satisfyingly respects the viewer and wants to be respected back. Sharp, exacting, trenchant, and fascinating, it’s a shard of history which uses immense polish to make of itself a mirror." The Telegraph
"Fatherland may form a postwar trilogy of sorts with Ida and Cold War, but the contemporary parallels are all too easy to see in this requiem for lost ideals and lost loved ones." FT
"the storytelling is astounding in its concision, sometimes to a fault, as the characters’ rich personal histories are elided." - The New Yorker