Sandra Hüller Soaks Up 5-Minute Standing Ovation for ‘Fatherland’ as Oscar Race Starts Early in Cannes
By Matt Donnelly, Nick Vivarelli
Sandra Hüller takes a fraught and cathartic road trip in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cannes premiere “Fatherland”– and her GPS is set for next year’s Oscar race.
The audience at the Grand Palais rewarded Hüller’s performance as the dutiful daughter of a post-war German literary genius with a 5-minute standing ovation, by Variety‘s count.
Hüller and her onscreen father Hanns Zischler brought a subtle but rewarding dynamic, as a family of expats traveling back to Germany to receive accolades for Zischler’s storied career. Along the way, they confront the collision of fascism and communism, death and regret, and the cost of legacy.
Hüller was overwhelmed by the praise at the Palais, her trademark stoicism breaking as the crowd saluted her moments of emotional abandon — including a tearjerker of a long-distance phone call and an explosion of rage at her narcissistic patriarch.
Shot in black-and-white — just like Pawlikowski’s preceding two works delving into the World War II years and their aftermath — “Fatherland” revolves around the rapport between Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann (Zischler) and his daughter Erika, who is an actress, writer and rally driver, played by Hüller. Set in the summer of 1949 at the height of the Cold War, the father and daughter embark on a road trip in a black Buick traveling from the U.S.-dominated Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar across a Germany in ruins.
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For this film, Pawlikowski reunited with his longtime filmmaking team, which includes the Oscar-nominated cinematographer Lukasz Zal, costume designer Aleksandra Staszko, editor Piotr Wójcik, production designers Katarzyna Sobańska and Marcel Sławiński and composer Marcin Marsecki.
With an 82-minute running time, “Fatherland” is the shortest feature film in the year’s Cannes competition lineup.
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