Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, starring Sandra Hüller, is set to open the 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival.
The director will personally welcome audiences at the gala screening in the Bosnia and Herzegovina capital on Aug. 14 with the film that rounds up his Cold War trilogy.
Fatherland had its world premiere at Cannes this year, earning Pawlikowski the best director award. The film centers on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Hüller) — an actress, writer and rally driver. In the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, father and daughter embark on a challenging and emotional road trip in a black Buick taking them across a Germany in ruins, from U.S.-dominated Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar. Returning home after sixteen years of exile in the U.S., Mann has to face not only a divided fatherland, but also a deep fracture within his own family.
“It seems like the film suits Sarajevo Film Festival because it’s steeped in history and in conflict, in situations which are still within living memory in Bosnia,” said Pawlikowski. “It feels like a good context to show the film. And I have a relationship with the Sarajevo Film Festival that stretches back for decades.”
His documentary film Serbian Epics (1992) was screened in the early days of the Sarajevo Film Festival. His feature Cold War opened the 24th Sarajevo Film Festival. The following year, in 2019, Pawlikowski was honored with the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, alongside a retrospective of his work presented within the Tribute To program.
“This is a festival that I feel very close to. I value the relationships I formed in Sarajevo with [festival founder] Miro [Purivatra], with [festival director] Jovan [Marjanović]. It is a kind of real relationships with people who are film lovers, but also have a sense of history,” continued the filmmaker. “My films, especially the last three which are steeped in history, have a very good home there. I’m very happy to be back and very thrilled that it’s the opening film of the festival.”
The Polish director began his career with award-winning documentaries before moving into narrative features with Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004), both BAFTA-winning films.
His film Ida (2013) won the Academy Award for best international feature film, the first Polish film to do so. It also won 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 was awarded the best director Award, and later received three Oscar nominations, including best director. It also won five awards at the 2018 European Film Awards, including best film, best director and best screenwriter.
The Sarajevo Film Festival 2026 runs Aug. 14-21.
