Synopsis
In post-war Germany, liberation by the Allies does not mean freedom for everyone. Hans Hoffmann is repeatedly imprisoned under Paragraph 175, which criminalizes homosexuality. Nevertheless, over the decades, he continues his quest for freedom and love, even if he finds it in the most unusual places.
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Cast
- Franz RogowskiHans Hoffmann
- Georg FriedrichViktor
- Anton von LuckeLeo Giese
- Thomas PrennOskar
- Thomas StecherGuard 1968
- Alfred HartungGuard 1945
- Thomas WehlingGuard 1957
- Mex SchlüpferBuddy Viktor
- David Burnell IVAlly
- Fabian StummPolice Officer
Recommendations
- 100
Variety
Meise’s film is an exquisite marriage of personal, political and sensual storytelling, its narrative and temporal drift tightened by another performance of quietly piercing vulnerability from Franz Rogowski. - 100
The New York Times
The director Sebastian Meise, who wrote the script with Thomas Reider, tells this story with open feeling and steady, emphatic calm. - 91
The Film Stage
Great Freedom asks a lot of its viewer and offers no rousing Hollywood ending. It’s not a film you see on a whim, but lovers of truthful, humanistic cinema should take note. This one is the real deal, surely to be given a chance. Or two. - 91
IndieWire
If Great Freedom is a subdued film more interested in studying old scar tissue than licking up fresh wounds, the rare instances when it draws blood . . . are all the more bruising as a result. - 90
The Hollywood Reporter
Chronicling an ignominious chapter in queer history, Great Freedom is also a contemplative psychological study of the effects of incarceration, and beyond that, an unconventional love story, tender but unsentimental. - 90
Screen Daily
While it smoulders with indignation for the injustice that was perpetrated for so many years, Great Freedom is also a love story, a remarkable character study, and an absorbing meditation on what long-term imprisonment for a crime that is not a crime does to the soul. - 88
Slant Magazine
In Great Freedom, the question of love is refreshingly never too far from bodily intimacy, irrespective of what kind of love that is. - 88
RogerEbert.com
It's one of [Rogowski's] most moving and fully imagined performances, anchoring a drama that tries to do a bit too much for its own good in terms of structure.
