Fatherland (2026), by Paweł Pawlikowski

I don't see Pawlikowski as a major filmmaker per se. Instead, I see an architect of 'parva opera', someone who like certain composers (Satie, Debussy predominantly) consciously won't engage with large form compositions preferring the small-er scale of a movie suite (never has he ever touched the 90-minute mark!).

And yet what a masterful string of film pearls does he deliver. A series of cinematic tonal poems, exquisitely formed, perfectly attuned to the atmosphere required, masterfully built in a way that through introspection and fine gestures resonate and then, almost kindly, explode into worlds decidedly lofty and ambitious, somehow more surprising than the original composition seemed to anticipate.

The same holds in this one, a film that probably will not stick to a bigger audience the way Cold War did, but what a gem it is... This time the ratio is once more the winner of it all (the great dp Lukasz Zal returns), giving a sense of added height to the frame (thus relieving a sort of tension the blocking intends), but also creating an atmosphere of divine presence (almost) nowhere to be seen in the action - until the final scene. It is a suitable example of the director's tonal dexterity, his acute ability of contrasting and emphasizing the plot. 

The latter presents itself as a letter to a dead world, that of artists defeated by their time (any-time as a matter of fact), poor mountainously talented people who have contributed colossal works of art for a civilization that crumbled, in a sense at least, when WWII proved that humanity never really had a chance. A romantic gem of cynical self-confidence, a work of art for the connoiseurs (whoever the hell we are), a defeatist film destined to win (most of) you over.