Sandra Hller's Cannes Film Festival performances and upcoming projects, including her role in 'Fatherland' and her collaborations with Ryan Gosling and Pawel Pawlikowski.
Sandra Hller poses for portrait photographs for the film ' Fatherland ' during the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 16, 2026. Director Pawe Pawlikowski poses for portrait photographs for the film ' Fatherland ' during the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 16, 2026.
Sandra Hller poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Fatherland' at the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Thursday, May 14, 2026. August Diehl, Sandra Hller, Pawel Pawlikowski, Hanns Zischler and Lukasz Zal pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Fatherland' at the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Thursday, May 14, 2026.
Sandra Hller poses for portrait photographs for the film 'Fatherland' during the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 16, 2026. Sandra Hller poses for portrait photographs for the film 'Fatherland' during the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 16, 2026. Eruptions of emotion don’t come naturally. She prefers to be quiet and calm, and often her screen presence radiates intensity when she’s simply watching.
But when she explodes — whether in grief or anger — it’s not something that she likes to do, particularly. She likes to observe more than she likes being observed. When she does something big, of course she’s the center of attention. Maybe that’s the root of it.
But you are not her therapist so we will not find out today. The full range of Hüller’s talent is on full display this year in four films that run from big to small. Foremost among them is ‘Fatherland,’ theIn the first week of Cannes, ‘Fatherland’ was widely acknowledged as a clear standout, and a possible Palme d’Or favorite.
Like ‘Ida’ and ‘Cold War,’ it’s elegantly shot in black and white, uncommonly brief (82 minutes) and throbs with the pain of postwar Europe. Hüller plays Erika, the daughter of the German author Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler). They return to Germany in 1949 on a road trip, toggling between the American-controlled West Germany and the Soviet-ruled East Germany. Their former country no more, they are betwixt, as Thomas says, ‘Mickey Mouse or Stalin.
’ set near a concentration camp. In ‘Fatherland,’ her character was staunchly opposed to the Nazis, but is now living amid their blithely unremorseful collaborators.
‘A void is hard to portray, and I think it’s a big deal trying it,’ says Hüller. ‘We talked about this in school. It’s part of our history classes. But I never got into the specifics of what it felt like.
We know a lot of pictures of the women cleaning up the streets because the men were dead or somewhere in prison. But what it meant to not know the country you were born in anymore is something we weren’t familiar with.
’ Several of Hüller’s performances have already been indelible parts of the Cannes Film Festival: the 2016 comedy ‘Toni Erdmann’ and the 2023At the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, Hüller won best leading performance for ‘Rose,’ a gender exploration set in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. In the March box-office hitshe co-starred alongside Ryan Gosling and, at Gosling’s urging, performed one of the movie’s best scenes: a karaoke rendition of Harry Styles’ ‘Sign of the Times.
’ She also co-stars in ‘I’m almost 50 now and I feel very blessed that I can have this experience right now,’ Hüller says.
‘For some of my peers, it’s a gap in the journey or the end of the journey. ’ If her character in ‘Fatherland’ is torn between worlds, Hüller is moving frictionless between the movie realms of Europe and Hollywood.
‘I’ve been looking at the things that came my way and I have been thinking about whether I can say yes to them or not, if I’m ready to do them,’ she says. ‘There are some experiences coming my way that I’ve never had before and I would be very, very stupid if I wouldn’t use them. ‘Not so much for success reasons,’ she continues.
‘It’s really more of a question of growth — and getting to know more spaces so you can move more freely through the world. There’s a lot of pleasure in this. It’s also dangerous. But it’s far out of my comfort zone.
’ Still, success has come with a cost. Hüller considers herself a theater actor first, and is desperate to return to the theater collective she grew out of. She still directs with them, but her notoriety is too much to be part of an ensemble
Sandra Hller Cannes Film Festival Fatherland Toni Erdmann Rose Ryan Gosling Pawel Pawlikowski
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