Vaterland

I, like many other cinephiles, first heard the name of Paweł Pawlikowski after the success of Ida, his fifth feature film, presented in 2013 at festivals such as Telluride, London and Warsaw before its wider theatrical release in 2014. The film would later begin its path toward the Academy Awards, where it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in a year filled with prestigious contenders such as the Dardenne Brothers with Two Days, One Night, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep and Xavier Dolan’s Mommy.

Ida introduced me to a very specific kind of cinema: the exploration of the past and the consequences of the Second World War in 1962 Poland through the eyes of a young woman, a novice preparing to take her vows. Together with her aunt, a complex woman marked by regret and suffering, she begins a journey into family history and identity. The photography constantly reinforces how the world weighs on its characters and their search for meaning and value in life. The final conversation and final scene stayed with me long after watching the film. It created a sense of cinematic silence and moral ambiguity that I had not experienced before, intensified by the black and white photography.

Before Ida, Pawlikowski began his career directing documentaries for the BBC under the name Paul Pawlikowski. He became well known in the British film and television scene and later directed his first fiction features in English, such as My Summer of Love, starring Emily Blunt, and the thriller The Woman in the Fifth, with Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas, both of which received international attention. Until Ida, he was largely considered a British filmmaker. The film marked his first feature in Polish and, as he himself described it, “an attempt to recover the Poland of his childhood,” after leaving the country as a teenager and moving through several European cities before his family settled in the United Kingdom.

Following the international recognition of Ida, Pawlikowski arrived at the Cannes Film Festival in competition with Cold War in 2018, winning the award for Best Director. Once again filmed mainly in Polish, the movie follows the relationship of a couple during the Cold War in communist Poland. It explores Polish culture through traditional folk songs and dances that enrich the emotional journey of its protagonists. It is difficult for me to find heterosexual relationships in cinema portrayed with this level of complexity: the excitement of meeting someone, the effect of politics and personal ambition on love, the desire to build a life together, and the tensions that gradually emerge. Cold War became, for me, one of the most honest cinematic portrayals of love and its contradictions.

Before beginning Fatherland, Pawlikowski was attached to another English-language project titled Island, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara. It was a project that interested me greatly, especially considering the sensitivity Pawlikowski brings to his characters and the strength of the actors involved. Unfortunately, the film was eventually shelved, and he instead moved toward developing Fatherland, his first feature primarily in the German language. The film follows Thomas Mann, the German author and Nobel Prize winner of 1929, and his daughter Erika during the Cold War as they travel from West Germany to East Germany.

I am especially drawn to this project because Pawlikowski’s cinema has already had a deep impact on me. The desolation and existential questions he leaves the viewer with in Ida, combined with the atmosphere of a Poland still marked by war, created a lasting impression. There is a sense of emotional return in his work, as if he is reconnecting with a place that shaped him, weaving together memory and history. As someone who has also migrated to another country with different traditions and culture, I can relate to that feeling of displacement and rediscovery. I experienced something similar with Cold War: the rural folk songs and dances reminded me of traditions I heard and learned growing up in Peru, and of how cultural memory travels through music and collective experience.

Another reason why Fatherland excites me is the cinematographer Łukasz Żal, who previously collaborated with Pawlikowski on both Ida and Cold War. Their visual work together has become one of the defining elements of his cinema. The film also stars Hanns Zischler alongside Sandra Hüller, one of the most important European actresses working today. Once again, the story has a postwar Europe context, continuing Pawlikowski’s fascination with identity, history and displacement. It is also notable that, like Ida, the film runs under 90 minutes. Across his recent work, Pawlikowski has shown that a concise runtime can still contain an emotionally rich and powerful story when supported by precise editing, atmosphere and visual storytelling.