Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland is set to open the 32^nd Sarajevo Film Festival and the Polish helmer is set to personally welcome audiences at the gala screening on August 14. 

The film, which rounds up Pawlikowski’s Cold War trilogy, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year where it won the Best Director award. 

Fatherland centers on the relationship between Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller), an actress, writer and rally driver. In the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, father and daughter embark on a challenging emotional road trip in a black Buick taking them across a Germany in ruins – from U.S. dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar. 

Returning home after sixteen years of exile in the U.S., Thomas has to face not only a divided fatherland, but a deep fracture within his own family. 

“It seems like the film suits Sarajevo Film Festival because it is steeped in history and in conflict, in situations which are still within living memory in Bosnia,” said Pawlikowski. “It feels like a good context to show the film. And I have a relationship with the Sarajevo Film Festival that stretches back for decades.” 

Pawlikowski’s 1992 documentary film Serbian Epics was screened in the early days of the Sarajevo Film Festival. His feature Cold War opened the 24^th Sarajevo Film Festival. The following year, in 2019, Pawlikowski was honored with the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, alongside a retrospective of his work presented within the Tribute To program. 

“This is a festival that I feel very close to,” he said. “I value the relationships I formed in Sarajevo with Miro, with Jovan. It is a kind of real relationship with people who are film lovers, but also have a sense of history. My films, especially the last three, which are steeped in history, have a very good home there. I’m happy to be back and very thrilled that it is opening the festival.” 

Pawlikowski’s 2013 film Ida won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, the first Polish film to do so. It also won five European Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenwriter. 

The 32st Sarajevo Film Festival takes place August 14-21, 2026.