Rose (2026) in person: Markus Schleinzer, Sandra Hüller

Markus Schleinzer: Rose (DE 2026) with Sandra Hüller in the title role as a veteran of the Thirty Years' War.

Telluride Film Festival (TFF) 2026

Chuck Jones' Cinema, Mountain Village, 6 Sep 2026

S/Sat 6:45PM - C/Sun 9AM - L/Sun 8:45PM Q&A

7a Rose

Larry Gross (TFF): "Markus Schleinzer opens his film with an evocative, black-and-white composition of the early 17th-century German countryside, ravaged by the fires of war, as a woman (Sandra Hüller), presenting as a man in soldier’s clothing, arrives in a village, holding documents that establish their homestead. Schleinzer’s script, co-written with Alexander Brom, is filled with brilliant twists and intriguing nuance, and his lucid-dream cinematography (by Gerald Kerkletz) evokes Carl Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC. But this soldier is no saint: they are intransigent, mysterious, powerful, hard-working ... and determined and ready to seize their own freedom, whatever it takes. Hüller is magnificent (as is the entire supporting cast, with special notice to Caro Braun, as the maiden the soldier takes as his wife). Who is Rose? That question, presented brilliantly in this somber, thought-provoking, tense and provocative fairytale, is sure to be discussed by future generations." –LG (Austria/Germany, 2026, 94m) In person: Markus Schleinzer, Sandra Hüller

AA: "Who are you?" asks Suzanna (Caro Braun) from her husband Rose (Sandra Hüller). A sting from a bee has set in motion a chain of events which reveal that her man is not a man. Tragedy ensues.

At the end of the Thirty Years' War, a former soldier arrives at a remote village and introduces himself as the sole inheritor of an abandoned plot which has fallen in a terrible condition. Against all advice he settles in, turns it into a successful farm and pays well to his help. In return to the access to the stream he needs to marry the owner's daughter. When offspring is expected, even that can be arranged. Nobody suspects anything until the bees sting.

When truth comes out, everybody turns against Rose except Suzanna who has grown to love her. "With trousers comes freedom". With the revelation comes imprisonment, trial and executions.

Markus Schleinzer directs with an assured pace, a sense of the lived world and authenticity in tools, buildings and clothing. This is a world of a brutal war and hard work. The stranger achieves everybody's respect first by the renovation of the farm and then by his bravery in killing a bear which threatens the sheep. He even teaches everybody to read and write - a true Lutheran calling, essential to the mission of the Thirty Years' War. 

"Leben. Betrug und Lüge." "Life. Betrayal and lie", says the stranger. What he achieves is real enough, even prophetic for the future. 

Central to the récit are the prosthetic devices of a flaccid penis and an erect one. Rose has learned their use in the war. The besieged is supposed to be taught by the victor who the master is. In prison, Rose is subjected to the same treatment to her jailers in a gang rape. Before she is executed, the baby is born.

Magnificent compositions in black and white, a sense of nature, often in early cinema style of the tableau in long take and long shot. The finale is in the great legacy of Carl Th. Dreyer (The Day of Wrath).

What a film!

Black and white. English subtitles n.c.

...

Rose brings to my mind another reality-based story, Sissinä lainavaatteissa ([A Guerrilla in Borrowed Clothes], 1958) by Usko Kemppi, taking place in the Great Northern War in Finland, a woman fighting in male disguise. I read it as a child.

In the cinema, I sense an affinity with Aleksander Askoldov's Komissar (1967).