Rose

Early 17th century, rural Germany: a mysterious soldier, soft-spoken and marred by a battle scar across his face, arrives in a Protestant village. The odd stranger claims to be the heir to an abandoned farmstead, yet the document he provides to support his claim doesn’t quite convince the suspicious villagers. As he revives the dead farmland with his hard work and pious nature, he begins to become a part of the community, marrying into a leading family. But the village’s trust is ever tenuous, and their skepticism threatens to reveal the stranger’s true identity.

At the center of Rose is the complex individual of the same name—her given name—who defies her birth as a woman to live out her days as a man. Sandra Hüller is a tour de force as a stranger who challenges and questions the performance of gender in Germany’s past.