The film follows Mann, played by Hanns Zischler, returning to Germany for the first time since the war, travelling with his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) from Frankfurt in the American zone to Soviet-occupied Weimar.
The screenplay was co-written by Pawlikowski and Henk Handloegten.
Shot in black and white, Fatherland is a European co-production filmed partly in Poland – in Legnica, Wałbrzych and Wrocław – as well as in Germany and the United States.
Pawlikowski worked with his regular collaborators, including cinematographer Łukasz Żal.
The prize is Pawlikowski's second best director award at Cannes; he won the same prize in 2018 for Cold War.
His earlier film Ida won the Academy Award for best foreign language film, becoming the first Polish movie to do so.
The jury also awarded the best director prize jointly to Spain's Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for La Bola Negra.
The Palme d'Or went to Romanian director Cristian Mungiu for Fjord, a drama set in a small Norwegian village about tensions between a long-established local family and a religious migrant couple.
Russian Andrei Zvyagintsev's Minotaur received the Grand Prix.
The main competition jury was led by South Korean director Park Chan-wook and included actors Demi Moore, Ruth Negga and Stellan Skarsgård, among others.
(ał)
Source: PAP, IAR