GREAT FREEDOM (GROSSE FREIHEIT) directed by Sebastian Meise
GREAT FREEDOM (GROSSE FREIHEIT) directed by Sebastian Meise
Country: Germany, Austria | Program: Un Certain Regard
Cast: Franz Rogowski - Hans | Georg Friedrich - Viktor
Spanning the decades following World War II, director Sebastian Meise’s German-Austrian co-production follows gay German man Hans’ (Franz Rogowski) numerous extended stints in prison, repeatedly incarcerated under Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which criminalised homosexuality and sanctioned the persecution of homosexuals until 1994. Georg Friedrich plays Hans’ surly and unpredictable Austrian cellmate Viktor, who remains incarcerated throughout Hans’ recurring stints in prison for repeat offences.
The narrative heft of Meise’s thoughtfully scripted drama is communicated through more than the dialogue, and the latter is stronger for it. A raggedly loveable Rogowski conveys Hans’ covert affection in furtive smiles and sidelong glances; the inevitability of Hans’ recurring punishment for expressing a love that the law forbids reverberates in the resounding clangs of the prison’s gates, inside which the vast majority of the film takes place; and the totality of his isolation echoes in the sombre refrain of a lonely unaccompanied trumpet. The film’s silences are full of what cannot be said in Hans and Viktor’s respectively hopeless situations in prison, and their gradual, unconventional friendship is ultimately what sustains both characters through their most vulnerable moments.
Strikingly lensed by Crystel Fournier’s singularly intimate cinematography (a frequent collaborator of director Céline Sciamma), this heartfelt reflection on an abject period of queer history resists total desolation, instead alighting on a kind of hope in the resilience of human connection, even amidst the darkest episodes of dehumanizing persecution.
Great Freedom won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes, and has been picked up by MUBI in a multi-territory distribution deal.
