Paweł Pawlikowski's Fatherland received 11 nominations at the European Film Awards

After the recognition obtained at the Cannes Film Festival, where Paweł Pawlikowski won the award for best director, Fatherland confirms itself among the most important titles of the European film season. The film received 11 nominations at the 39th edition of the European Film Awards, making it the most nominated of this edition.

In the running for the award for best film and for best director with Pawlikowski, the film also received nominations for the screenplay, written by the director himself together with Henk Handloegten, and for the performances of Sandra Hüller as best actress and Hanns Zischler as best actor. The awards in the photography, editing, casting, set design, make-up and hairstyling and sound categories complete the picture. Fatherland is in Italian cinemas from 16 October, distributed by MUBI, and has also been designated a Critics' Film by the National Union of Italian Film Critics (SNCCI).

Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, already author of Ida and Cold War, Fatherland tells the story of the return to Germany of the writer Thomas Mann, played by Hanns Zischler, accompanied by his daughter Erika, to whom Sandra Hüller lends her face. Set at the height of the Cold War, the film follows the two protagonists in a black Buick, on a journey from Frankfurt, under American influence, to Weimar, in the Soviet-controlled zone. It is the first time that Mann returns to his homeland after choosing exile in the United States to escape Nazism. A geographical journey that also becomes a confrontation with the wounds of history, the sense of belonging, the weight of personal decisions and the contradictions of a divided nation.

Alongside Zischler and Hüller, the cast includes August Diehl, Devid Striesow and Anna Madeley. The screenplay is signed by Pawlikowski and Henk Handloegten, while the photography is entrusted to Łukasz Żal, a long-time collaborator of the director. With this new work, Pawlikowski returns to question the relationships between identity, family, guilt and memory, against the backdrop of a Europe still grappling with the consequences of the war. Presented in competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, where it won the award for best director ex aequo, Fatherland was also presented at the 21st Rome Film Festival in the Best Of section.