Vaterland (Fatherland)

Hanns Zischler & Sandra Hüller as Thomas & Erika Mann in a film by Paweł Pawlikowski (Ida, Cold War). Now playing at the Intimes cinema.

Through striking imagery, this film by Oscar winner Paweł Pawlikowski—which won the Best Director Award at Cannes—tells the story of Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika’s return to a Germany in ruins. In 1949, on the occasion of Goethe’s 200th birthday, the two return from exile in the United States to their devastated homeland—an emotional road trip from Frankfurt am Main to Weimar.

After the end of World War II, Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter, the actress, author, and cabaret artist Erika (Sandra Hüller), embark on a journey through a Germany in ruins—from Frankfurt in the American occupation zone to Soviet-controlled Weimar. On the occasion of Goethe’s anniversary, people on both sides of the inner-German border hope for words of comfort, approval, and forgiveness from the greatest of all storytellers. Amid euphoric Wagner heirs and literarily sophisticated generals, Germany’s most important writer is courted and sometimes even berated, while the drama of his own family quietly escalates. It is the first time since the war that Thomas Mann has returned to his homeland, from which he had once fled into exile. A journey into the wounded German soul, meant to heal—for Erika and “the Magician,” as his children often called Thomas Mann, it becomes a journey into the very depths of their being.

Set at the height of the Cold War, *Fatherland* centers on the relationship between the writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika—an actress, writer, and rally driver—as they embark on a road trip in a black Buick cruiser across a Germany in ruins.

Original German version with English subtitles / German with English subtitles

www.kino-intimes.de/vaterland