Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Sebastian Meise
Cast
Franz Rogowski,
Georg Friedrich,
Anton von Lucke,
Thomas Prenn,
Thomas Stecher,
Alfred Hartung
Genre
Drama,
Romance,
War
At the end of World War 2, as a result of anti-homosexuality laws, Hans Hoffman, a gay Jewish man, is sentenced to an Austrian prison after being released from a concentration camp. There, he develops a working friendship with a bigoted addict and a secret romance with another inmate.
The humanity of the story and characters is striking, thanks to the phenomenal actors and interesting narrative structure. I'm surprised by how much the movie has stuck with me since first watching it—the questions it raises about internal and external freedom are fascinating.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
The director Sebastian Meise, who wrote the script with Thomas Reider, tells this story with open feeling and steady, emphatic calm.
Variety by Guy Lodge
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.
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
A film that both treasures the life span of a lit match and respects the patience it takes to endure a prison term, “Great Freedom” makes an exquisite case for the impossibility of caging the heart, even when love itself is criminalized.
Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan
Gradually, a story of bittersweet beauty and unexpected tenderness emerges.
IndieWire by David Ehrlich
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.
The Film Stage by Zhuo-Ning Su
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.
Screen Daily by Lee Marshall
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.
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
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.
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
The film, written by the director and Thomas Reider, is often brutal in content and spare in style, a celebration of unquenchable tenacity and the sustaining power of love.
RogerEbert.com by Matt Zoller Seitz
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.
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
In Great Freedom, the question of love is refreshingly never too far from bodily intimacy, irrespective of what kind of love that is.
TheWrap by Dan Callahan
The conclusion of Great Freedom manages to finesse the flaws of the movie, and it winds up feeling genuinely tragic.
The Playlist by Gregory Ellwood
Despite a very frank and welcome illustration of gay sexuality rarely seen in modern media (in this manner at least), Greater Freedom continually teases us with storylines and subject matter by choosing to frame this era through a relationship that it cannot rationalize.
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