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1

franz rogowski is one of the best doing it. whole movie is pretty great but there's no way it could have achieved what it did without him. love how much attention there is to light in this, looks phenomenal. loved this

Review by Julian ★★★★ Liked

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Review by davidehrlich ★★★★

The last of the Nazi concentration camps were liberated in 1945, but not all of their survivors were freed. For many gay men born during the Weimar Republic — who had been disqualified from Hitler’s master race no matter their religion — the end of the Holocaust marked the beginning of another, longer sentence, as both sides of post-war continued to enforce the criminalization of homosexuality under Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code (with West adopting the Nazis’ aggressive revisions to the 1871 law). Already hollowed and dehumanized by their suffering in the Shoah, these men were shuttled directly from Auschwitz or Dachau to prisons in Munich or Berlin without so much as a sniff of the…

1

Creating your own version of freedom when the systems in place deny you it; triumphant love in place of defeated submission. An insane balancing act executed to perfection

1

CIFF 2021: film #3 (57th chicago international film festival)

“i’ve been on the run all my life”

poignant in a way that never feels forced or false, and just vulnerable enough to let tenderness creep its way in. franz rogowski is mesmerizing as a man stuck in time, solidifying him as one of my favorite working actors. i can’t the last time i saw such a good ending

5

that was the worst saxophone playing I've ever heard in my life

6

Cannes day 2: Forgot to wear underwear so decided not to drink water BUT THEN watched Franz Rogowski naked on screen while Franz Rogoswki in a white suit sat 15ft away from me.

3

we found love (and life) in a hopeless place.

Review by nabeel ★★★★ Liked

sometimes movies that seem bleak from afar end up having the greatest amount of tenderness portrayed onscreen and this is a perfect example of that. without a doubt, my favourite ending of the year and probably the most overlooked movie of the festival season

Review by Kylo ★★★★

I thought this was so beautiful. So touching. Artfully put together. Franz Rogowski was amazing. Great performances by all. I kinda loved how it took its own pace to tell the story. It did feel a bit long because of that though.

Review by aio ★★★★½ Liked

Can’t quite figure out what is it that made me love this movie so much. I wished it would continue on and when it finished I was ready to watch it again right away.

Maybe it’s the tenderness? Specific pained tender glances to your lover. The lit match in the dark cell? A moment you expect and it comes and you savour it fully. Openness? That ability to accept love and whatever pain might come with it. Question of home? Places to which we condition ourselves voluntarily because we only know how to exist within them. Self destructiveness? As a way to reach our own small death and catharsis after which comes -

Tenderness. And in whatever form it comes, it is accepted fully and freely. With no denying of self.

Review by nick ★★★½ Liked

Great Freedom is a decent gay prison drama that's hard-hitting with its theme and story, yet rather stingy with its emotional outlets. It's not one of my favorite queer movies of recent years, but seeing Franz Rogowski offering a bold, layered performance, which may or may not involve spreading his cheeks for the world to see, is enough reason to check this out.

Chronicling a German concentration camp survivor's decades of dehumanized experiences in jail simply because of his sexuality, Great Freedom is a self-critical, somber look back into a dark period of German history where gay citizens were ruthlessly punished for being themselves. Franz Rogowski is the perfect candidate to pull off the tall order of a loner longing…