History is full of women who took men’s clothes to escape rigid gender roles — from Hua Mulan and Joan of Arc to the pirate pair Mary Read and Anne Bonny — and countless others whose stories went unrecorded. Markus Schleinzer’s film Rose imagines one of those lives: a 17th-century woman who hides her sex to claim a life normally denied to her.
Sandra Hüller plays Rose, a scarred veteran who appears at an isolated Protestant village after the Thirty Years’ War, asserting her right to an abandoned farm. First seen at the Berlinale, Rose opened in German cinemas on April 30 and will reach international audiences through Mubi.
The project grew out of Schleinzer’s research into historical people who lived as men. On turning 50 he discovered the case of 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, adopted male dress and even used the name Rosenstengel (Rose stem), prompted Schleinzer to ask why some people assume other identities when the only alternative is to be denied basic freedoms.
He found a variety of motives: avoiding forced marriages or domestic abuse, surviving economically after a husband’s death, following a spouse to war, or preserving family honor by putting a daughter in a traditionally male role. Across those reasons, Schleinzer says, runs one constant: the pursuit of freedom.
For Schleinzer — raised by women and openly queer — writing Rose was a political gesture. He frames the historical tale as a comment on present struggles: entrenched gender inequality, continuing gender-based violence and the heated debates over transgender rights. The film asks, quietly but insistently, why some bodies and identities are granted liberties others are not.
Stylistically, Rose evokes austere black-and-white period dramas. Schleinzer’s background as a casting director and his admiration for Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon shape a film built from restraint: long silences, careful framing and deliberate ambiguity. He wrote the role envisaging Sandra Hüller, who won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlinale and has drawn international attention for The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall.
Schleinzer resists exposition. Instead of speeches he relies on small gestures and Hüller’s precise, controlled acting to suggest the character’s many layers: the woman who remembers who she is, the performance of masculinity, the craft of a con artist and the constant vigilance of someone hiding a secret. The film refuses easy heroics; Rose is not a simple martyr or an obvious activist. She is pragmatic, sometimes self-interested, and morally ambiguous. Her secrecy brings both strength and harm, making her a complicated figure whose contradictions drive the drama.
Rather than preaching, Rose invites reflection about the social codes and symbols that limit women. In a late exchange, when asked why she rejected the life she was born into, Rose answers plainly: “There was more freedom in trousers.” She follows, with the film’s quietly devastating final note: “It’s just a small piece of fabric.”