By Matt Donnelly, Nick Vivarelli
Getty Images Sandra Hüller takes a fraught and cathartic road trip in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cannes premiere “Fatherland”– and her GPS is set for next year’s Oscar race. The audience at the Grand Palais rewarded Hüller’s performance as the dutiful daughter of a post-war German literary genius with a 5-minute standing ovation, by Variety‘s count. Hüller and her onscreen father Hanns Zischler brought a subtle but rewarding dynamic, as a family of expats traveling back to Germany to receive accolades for Zischler’s storied career. Along the way, they confront the collision of fascism and communism, death and regret, and the cost of legacy. Hüller was overwhelmed by the praise at the Palais, her trademark stoicism breaking as the crowd saluted her moments of emotional abandon — including a tearjerker of a long distance phone call and an explosion of rage at her narcissistic patriarch.
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