Brilliantly performed and filmed luminously in black and white, Paweł Pawlikowski elegantly counterpoints Thomas Mann’s 1948 return from a long exile in America to a post war Europe. New and old tensions abound as he returns, particularly in the mainly off-screen tensions with his author son the despairing Karl Mann.

Accompanied by his daughter and translator Erika (a magnificent Sandra Hüller) Mann arrives in West Germany to receive the Goethe prize and, despite pressure from his CIA handler, Mann plans to travel to Weimar, the home of Goethe, now in East Germany to accept a second.

Living in a time when the words of authors mattered, Mann’s pronouncements are enthusiastically anticipated. Aloof and sure, Mann believes Germany’s way forward is to return to Goethe’s belief in a deeper, more humane community. That Mann cannot replicate a similar humanity for his son will form part of his own family’s trauma.