Fatherland

It's 1949 and the Nobel Prize-winning writer, who left Germany with Hitler's rise in 1933, is returning to his homeland for the first time since the end of the war to receive the Goethe Prize. Accompanied by his loyal daughter Erika who takes care of all the trip logistics, Mann receives a warm welcome by the Mayor of Frankfurt. But threats also abound in the city, calling him ''communist scum'' and ''traitor''. The war might be over, but there is more than a hint of remaining fascism on the streets – and in the cocktail parties – of Frankfurt. There is criticism too that Mann chose to leave rather than stay and resist. As Mann and Erika make their way from US-dominated Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar (where a colonel wishes to discuss ''Mephistopheles and dialectics'' with Mann), their black Buick takes them through a Germany in ruins, and they must contend with a personal loss that builds within before finally landing with colossal strain. Pawlikowski, with luminous black and white images, explores the impact of the push and pull of politics on a single artist in telling a transcendent and profound story of family, guilt and love in a time of turmoil.