History records many women who adopted men’s clothing to escape restrictive gender roles — from Hua Mulan and Joan of Arc to pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny — with many more lives unrecorded. Markus Schleinzer’s film Rose imagines one such story: a 17th-century woman who conceals her gender.
In the film, Sandra Hüller plays Rose, a scarred soldier who arrives in an isolated Protestant village after the Thirty Years’ War, claiming to be heir to an abandoned farmstead. After premiering at the Berlinale, Rose opened in German theaters on April 30 and will be distributed internationally by Mubi.
The film grew from Schleinzer’s research into historical figures who lived as men. On turning 50, he learned about Catharina Margaretha Linck, executed for sodomy in 1721 and recorded as the last person in Europe put to death for lesbian sexual activity. Linck — who fought as a soldier, wore men’s clothes, had relationships with women and even adopted the name Rosenstengel (Rose stem) — sparked Schleinzer’s curiosity about why people assume other identities to live freedoms denied to them.
Schleinzer found varied motives behind such life choices: escaping forced marriage or domestic violence, supporting oneself after a spouse’s death, following husbands to war, or preserving family honor by sending a daughter to fight. But the common aim, he says, was freedom.
Writing Rose was a political act for Schleinzer, who explores queer identity and history in his work. Raised by women and identifying as queer, he sees feminism as crucial today, arguing the film — though historical — speaks to contemporary struggles: persistent gender inequality, rising gender-based violence and contentious debates over transgender rights. Rose asks why some people are denied basic liberties that others enjoy.
Stylistically, Rose recalls austere black-and-white historical dramas; Schleinzer’s casting background and admiration for Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon inform the film’s deliberate ambiguity and silence. He wrote the part imagining Sandra Hüller from the start. Hüller, who won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlinale, has gained recent international acclaim for roles in The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall.
Schleinzer aimed to reveal Rose’s complexity without grand speeches, using silence and small gestures. The character layers include a woman’s inner identity, a crafted masculine persona, the tactics of a confidence artist and the constant vigilance to hide her secret. Hüller’s precise, restrained performance conveys these overlapping facets.
Unlike many films that heroize women who pass as men, Rose resists a simple moral framing. Schleinzer’s protagonist is not an archetypal victim or activist; she is pragmatic, self-interested at times, and morally ambiguous. As the story unfolds, Rose’s secrecy harms others, making her both strong and culpable — a figure whose contradictions make her compelling.
The film prompts reflection rather than preaching, asking viewers to consider the social structures and symbols that constrain women. Near the end, when Rose is asked why she defied her birthright, she answers, “There was more freedom in trousers,” adding, “It’s just a small piece of fabric.”