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The Polish Film Festival in America (PFFA), the world’s most extensive showcase of Polish films and the largest annual cultural event outside of Poland, welcomes Oscar-winning director Paweł Pawlikowski to Chicago for two special screenings of his new film FATHERLAND at the Music Box Theatre on Wednesday, October 28.Pawlikowski will introduce the 5 PM screening and take part in a Q&A afterward. He will also introduce the 7:30 PM screening.
FATHERLAND won Pawlikowski the Best Director prize at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. His previous two features were COLD WAR (2018), which also won him Best Director at Cannes, and IDA (2013), which won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Pawlikowski received the PFFA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. His “Cold War” won the PFFA Grand Prix in 2018. In 2003 PFFA organized his first major retrospective.
FATHERLAND centres on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) – actress, writer and rally driver. In the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, father and daughter embark on a challenging and emotional road trip in a black Buick taking them across a Germany in ruins – from US dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar. Returning home after sixteen years of exile in the US, Thomas Mann has to face not only a divided fatherland, but also a deep fracture within his own family
With FATHERLAND, Pawlikowski picks up where he left off with his award-winning IDA and COLD WAR, exploring – in his elliptic, distilled style – the themes of identity, family, love and guilt amid the turmoil and confusion of post-war Europe.
The film is in German, French and English with English subtitles. Running time is 82 min.
FATHERLAND is a MUBI release and opens at the Music Box Theatre on October 30th.
Both screenings will take place at the Music Box Theatre (3733 N. Southport Ave., Chicago).
Tickets are available through the Music Box Theatre at
musicboxtheatre.com/films-and-events/fatherland.The 38th Polish Film Festival in America will take place November 7–22, 2026.
For more information, please call the PFFA at 773-486-9612, send an e-mail to [email protected], or visit the official website www.pffamerica.com.
The PFFA is organized by the Society for Arts, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) institution.
Tax-exempt donations to PFFA are appreciated and will be prominently acknowledged.
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Event venue
Music Box Theatre (3733 N. Southport Ave., Chicago), 3733 N Southport Ave, Chicago, IL 60613-3718, United States
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