Paweł Pawlikowski's Fatherland, with Sandra Hüller as Erika Mann travelling postwar Germany beside her father Thomas, screened as a Gala at the Royal Festival Hall.
Paweł Pawlikowski, the Oscar-winning director of Ida, brought Fatherland to the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Wednesday 14 October 2026. It was a Gala of the seventieth London Film Festival, with Sandra Hüller in the lead.
After Ida and Cold War, Fatherland completes his trilogy of historical films. It opened in competition at Cannes in May, where he shared the Best Director award with Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo for La Bola Negra. MUBI distributes it in British cinemas.
Hüller plays Erika Mann, who in 1949 accompanies her father, the Nobel laureate Thomas Mann, on a literary tour through West and East Germany. A family death on the road tests the reconciliation he preaches for his divided country.
Hüller was born in Suhl, in Thuringia, in 1978 and spent a decade on the German stage. Her first lead on screen, in Requiem, won her the Silver Bear for Best Actress at Berlin in 2006.
Toni Erdmann made her known abroad in 2016. In 2023 she starred in Anatomy of a Fall, which brought her an Academy Award nomination, and in The Zone of Interest.
Hanns Zischler plays Thomas Mann.