Following the terrible reception of Asghar Farhadi‘s new film at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival, another contemporary luminary lived up to expectations with his latest offering. Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski‘s new film premiered in competition at the festival this week and received universal acclaim. MUBI also debuted the film’s first teaser trailer in conjunction with its Cannes premiere, providing a striking first look at the World War II-era drama. The movie stars Sandra Hüller in the lead role of a woman who, along with her father, returns to Germany in the aftermath of the war. Her father happens to be the exiled writer Thomas Mann.
The minute-long teaser features no dialogue, and unfolds entirely from the perspective of the two characters as they drive along a road ravaged by war. Good luck trying to figure out how Pawlikowski pulled off the impressive tracking shot, which pulls off one of the most impressive feats of immersion in recent memory. A few weeks ago, Hüller played a memorable supporting role in Project Hail Mary, but arguably her best-known recent film is another World War II-era drama, the Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest. It’s perhaps too early to call it, but considering the acclaim being directed at Pawlikowski’s movie, it wouldn’t be surprising to see it compete at the Oscars next year.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
The Movie Will Be Released in North America by MUBI
We’re talking about Fatherland, which features Hanns Zischler as the Nobel laureate novelist, and August Diehl as his son. Following its premiere at Cannes, the movie debuted with a perfect 100% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. However, the score has since dropped to 93% following ScreenRant’s negative review, which praised the central performances but found fault with other aspects of the film. On the other hand, Time Out described it as “another expansive, enriching work from a modern master,” while The Guardian called it “an impossibly elegant, poised historical vignette.” Like Pawlikowski’s similarly themed earlier films, Ida and Cold War, Fatherland has also been shot in black and white by Łukasz Żal. The cinematographer worked with Hüller on The Zone of Interest and collaborated with Chloé Zhao on the Oscar-winning Hamnet. Fatherland will be released in Poland on June 19, and will be distributed in North America by MUBI at an undisclosed date. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
Release Date
June 19, 2026
Runtime
82 minutes
Director
Paweł Pawlikowski
Writers
Hendrik Handloegten, Paweł Pawlikowski
Producers
Dimitri Rassam, Edward Berger, Ewa Puszczyńska, Jeanne Tremsal, Lorenzo Gangarossa, Lorenzo Mieli, Mario Gianani
