- Pawel Pawlkowski’s Fatherland made a strong debut at the Cannes.
- The film received a six-minute standing ovation.
- Pawlikowski co-wrote the screenplay with Hendrik Handloegte
Pawel Pawlkowski's Fatherland made a strong debut at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, receiving a six-minute standing ovation. As the applause continued inside a packed Grand Théâtre Lumière, Pawlikowski, who co-wrote the screenplay with Hendrik Handloegten, appeared emotional.
“I hope fifty per cent of you meant it,” the filmmaker joked during his speech. He then thanked his cast and crew before adding, “For once, I enjoyed watching one of my movies.”
The emotional reception marked director Pawlikowski's return to Cannes since his acclaimed 2018 film Cold War.
Fatherland stars Hanns Zischler as Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann and Sandra Hüller as his daughter Erika Mann. The story is set during the Cold War and follows the father-daughter duo on an emotional road trip through post-war Germany.
The film travels across a divided country, moving from American-controlled Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar, while exploring themes of exile, identity and belonging.
This is Pawlikowski's third time premiering a film at Cannes, and expectations around the project were already high following the success of Cold War, which earned him the Best Director prize at Cannes along with three Oscar nominations.
In his director's statement, Pawlikowski explained the themes behind the film. “Fatherland contends with the turmoils of history, with exile and with our transcendental need for home and belonging,” he said.
The filmmaker also revealed that while the story is based on real historical figures, the film takes creative liberties in parts. Pawlikowski continued, “Trying to fuse the personal and the historical in a poignant, mutually enhancing way, we took some liberties with historical facts and their chronology while trying to stay faithful to the emotional and intellectual truth of the matter.”
The movie also reunites Pawlikowski with several longtime collaborators, including cinematographer Łukasz Żal. The standing ovation for Fatherland came just a day after another major Cannes reaction for Mubi, whose film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma reportedly received a nine-minute ovation during its premiere earlier this week.
