20/08/2025 - The Academy Award-winning director’s new feature explores Thomas Mann’s post-war journey across a divided Germany

Actors Hanns Zischler (© Jennifer Fey) and Sandra Hüller (© Christian Hüller)

Acclaimed Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski, who won the Academy Award for Ida [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
film profile] and received an Oscar nomination for Cold War [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Pawel Pawlikowski
film profile], has begun principal photography on his latest feature, 1949 (originally titled Vaterland). Shooting is currently taking place in Poland, Germany and Italy.

Set against the backdrop of a devastated Europe at the dawn of the Cold War, 1949 follows renowned German novelist and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika. A journalist, actress and rally driver, Erika accompanies her father on a road trip in a black Buick cruiser, travelling from US-dominated Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar. Their journey through the ruins of Germany becomes a reflection on family bonds, identity and guilt, while capturing the moral uncertainty of a continent divided by new ideological frontiers.

Thomas Mann is played by German actor Hanns Zischler (Munich, The Universal Theory [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Timm Kröger
film profile]), while Academy Award-nominated German star Sandra Hüller (The Zone of Interest [+see also:
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film profile], Anatomy of a Fall [+see also:
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interview: Justine Triet
film profile]) portrays Erika. The ensemble cast also features August Diehl (A Hidden Life [+see also:
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film profile], Inglourious Basterds [+see also:
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film profile]), Anna Madeley (Patrick Melrose, All Creatures Great and Small), Devid Striesow (All Quiet on the Western Front [+see also:
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interview: Edward Berger
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interview: Michael Haneke
film profile], A Fish Swimming Upside Down [+see also:
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film profile]).

1949 is based on the 2021 novel The Magician by Irish novelist Colm Tóibín, and the script is co-written by Pawlikowski and German writer-director Henk Handloegten. The film continues the thematic exploration of Ida and Cold War, delving into identity, guilt, family and love amid the moral confusion of post-war Europe. Ida won 70 international accolades, including five European Film Awards and the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign-language Film. Cold War earned Pawlikowski the Best Director Award at Cannes in 2018 and went on to secure three Oscar nominations, among many other plaudits.

For 1949, Pawlikowski reunites with several of his long-time collaborators, including Oscar-nominated cinematographer Łukasz Żal (Cold War), production designers Katarzyna Sobańska and Marcel Sławiński, costume designer Aleksandra Staszko, editor Piotr Wójcik and composer Marcin Marsecki.

The film is a German-Italian-Polish-French co-production. It is being staged by Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Mieli for Rome-based OUR Films, a Mediawan film production and financing company; Ewa Puszczyńska for Łódź-based Extreme Emotions; Jeanne Tremsal and Edward Berger for Nine Hours; and Dimitri Rassam for Chapter2. It is being made in collaboration with Lorenzo Gangarossa for Circle One. Global streaming service, production company and film distributor MUBI is serving as co-producer and will handle global distribution of the film.