Show description
A heartrending, austere portrait of a physically and spiritually scarred woman returning to her postwar hometown in the 1600s, posing as a male soldier.
Horror is central in the tragic life of Rose (a transcendent Sandra Hüller), victim of a harrowing childhood and innumerable atrocities on the battlefields of the Thirty Years War, leaving her face disfigured from a bullet-wound. From an early age, she noticed the freedom a pair of trousers would afford her, and has since spent her life posing as a man. With the war over, Rose travels to a remote German Protestant village, laying a dubious familial claim to a dilapidated stretch of farmland. Rose’s life is one of fabrications, careful deceptions, a delicate ecosystem of repression which begins to unravel when she is betrothed to a local’s daughter.
Cruelty and brutality are everywhere in Markus Schleinzer’s transfixing new film, but rarely shown on screen. Shot in rapturous black and white, it is a tough, Bergmanesque tragedy, shot through with a staggering humanism that flows from Hüller, who has quickly emerged as one of the most significant performers of our time. It is not strictly a film about the transgender experience, but one about the terrible restraints we put on oppressed classes and the sacrifices they must make in order to live truthfully. – Tom Augustine
“Not an image is wasted. Not a single line of dialogue feels unnecessary, or a subplot tangential… Watching Hüller, already a master of submerged heartbreak in so many previous parts, we might begin to suspect that we’re witnessing her greatest role yet.” - Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
Explore the full programme at nziff.co.nz.
