Summary

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Mubi opens “ Fatherland ” in select theaters starting Friday, October 23. The aching black-and-white, the Academy aspect ratio, the streak of fatalism running between dueling identities — you know when you’re in a Pawel Pawlikowski movie. His latest, “Fatherland,” takes us on a melancholy road trip from U.S.-operated Frankfurt to Soviet-run Weimar in Germany with “The Magic Mountain” author Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika ( Sandra Hüller ) in 1949.

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