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Paweł Pawlikowski is a Polish film director known for films such as Ida and Cold War, both of which explored the aftermath of conflict and division in 20th-century Europe. His latest film, Fatherland, follows the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika on a journey across a divided, war-damaged Germany in 1949, and stars German actress Sandra Hüller, who has recently drawn wide attention for roles including Anatomy of a Fall.

The Sarajevo Film Festival is one of the best-known film events in south-eastern Europe, held each year in the Bosnian capital, a city still shaped by the memory of the 1990s Bosnian war. Pawlikowski has a long-standing connection to the festival, having shown work there since the early 1990s, and was previously given one of its honorary awards.

Fatherland has already been shown at the Cannes Film Festival, one of the most prominent events in world cinema, where Pawlikowski won an award for his direction. Its selection to open this year's Sarajevo festival is notable both because of the film's historical subject matter and because of the director's decades-long ties to the city.