The latest project by Academy Award–winning director Paweł Pawlikowski is set at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s and centers on Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize–winning author. After years of exile, Mann returns to his homeland to deliver a speech marking the 200th anniversary of Goethe’s birth—first in Frankfurt, then in Weimar. He is accompanied by his daughter Erika: a brilliant, uncompromising, and liberated woman who serves not only as his driver, but also as his translator and closest collaborator.
Their journey through a country torn between East and West becomes a confrontation with the past, with political pressures, and with personal tensions. Mann, faithful to the idea of independent art, strives to preserve his dignity and freedom of thought in a world that demands he take sides. The cast includes Sandra Hüller, known for her roles in The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall.
