Fatherland review – Sandra Hüller brings a bayonet of intelligence to Paweł Pawlikowski’s taut return (opens in new tab)

Cannes film festival: Hanns Zischler stars as Thomas Mann on his 1949 tour of Germany, contending with political barbs, personal tragedy and his daughter, played by an extraordinary HüllerHere is an impossibly elegant, poised historical vignette whose brevity and control can hardly contain its characters’ personal and historical pain. It is directed and co-written by the Polish film-maker Paweł Pawlikowski and shot in lustrous monochrome by Lukasz Zal; it is a film about exile and betrayal, t...