Pawlikowski’s spare film depicts Thomas Mann’s journey through a devastated post-war Germany as a powerful historical and personal drama.

In 1949, Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann and his daughter, the actress, writer and cabaret artist Erika Mann, embark on a journey through Germany to mark the 200th anniversary of Goethe’s birth. It is the first time since the war that Thomas Mann has returned to his native country, from which he had once fled into exile. Their journey takes them through a country in ruins, from Frankfurt am Main in the American occupation zone to Soviet-controlled Weimar. On both sides of the inner-German border, people hope that the greatest of all storytellers will offer words of comfort, approval and forgiveness on the occasion of the Goethe anniversary. Amid euphoric Wagner heirs and literary-minded generals, Germany’s most important writer is courted and, at times, insulted, while the drama within his own family quietly escalates.

Following the Oscar-winning Ida and the multi-award-winning drama Cold War (Best Director at Cannes, five European Film Awards, including Best Film), Polish-British director Paweł Pawlikowski has now made his first film about historical figures based on real events. He does, however, take the liberty of altering facts and chronology. In reality, it was Thomas Mann’s wife, Katja Mann, who accompanied the author on his journey, rather than his daughter Erika. Klaus Mann also died around two months before the journey, not during it. Pawlikowski made these changes in part to highlight the difficult relationships between the siblings and their father and, as he writes, “to bring the personal and the historical together in a moving and mutually enriching way”.

Awarded the prize for Best Director at Cannes, the film conveys complex constellations, both familial and historical, through a restrained yet powerful cinematic language and the outstanding performances of its ensemble, above all Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler.

Germany, Poland, Italy, France 2026, b&w, 82 mins. With English subtitles.

Director: Paweł Pawlikowski. With Hanns Zischler, Sandra Hüller, August Diehl, Anna Madeley, Devid Striesow, Theo Trebs.

Pawel Pawlikowski

Paweł Pawlikowski is a Polish filmmaker who began his career directing award-winning documentaries in the UK before moving into feature films with Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004). Both films received BAFTA awards. His film Ida (2013) became the first Polish film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and also received five European Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenwriter. Cold War (2018) premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where Pawlikowski won the award for Best Director. The film subsequently received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Director, and won five European Film Awards in 2018, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenwriter.

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