Pawel Pawlikowski’s ‘Fatherland’ premieres in New York: Poland’s candidate for the 2027 Oscar

Pawel Pawlikowski’s ‘Fatherland’, Poland’s official submission for the Best International Feature Film award at the 99th Oscars, premieres in New York today as part of the Main Slate programme of the 64th New York Film Festival, as the festival’s official website reports. Screenings continue on October 5, 6 and 7 at Film at Lincoln Center venues, while the American theatrical opening is set for October 23 at Film Forum, according to BroadwayWorld.

The 82-minute black-and-white drama, with cinematography by Łukasz Żal, follows Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) on an imaginary 1949 journey through a war-devastated Germany, divided between two blocs that each claim Mann as their own. At the centre of the film are father-daughter family tensions and the denial of a country that has just emerged from destruction but still does not confront its own guilt.

Pawlikowski won the Best Director prize at the 2026 Cannes Festival for this film (ex aequo with Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for ‘La Bola Negra’, according to Screen Daily), thus closing his historical trilogy after ‘Ida’ (the 2014 Oscar winner) and ‘Cold War’ (with three Oscar nominations in 2018). Critics have called it ‘a perfectly cut gem’, with praise for the black-and-white cinematography and Hüller’s restrained performance.

Poland has sent Pawlikowski into the Oscar race for the third time, after two previous experiences. With premieres already in Cannes, Telluride and now New York — as well as American distribution by MUBI — ‘Fatherland’ enters the awards season as one of the early favourites for the international film shortlist, which is announced at the ceremony on March 14, 2027.