Franz Rogowski in “Great Freedom" at the Figge Art Museum -- November 7.
Thursday, November 7, 6:30 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as a work that "makes an exquisite case for the impossibility of caging the heart," the award-winning Austrian drama Great Freedom enjoys a November 7 screening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum, director/co-writer Sebastian Meise's moving film also praised by The Hollywood Reporter as "a contemplative psychological study of the effects of incarceration, and beyond that, an unconventional love story, tender but unsentimental."
With Meise's lauded achievement co-written by Thomas Reider, Great Freedom demonstrates how, in post-war Germany, liberation by the Allies didn't mean freedom for all. In the film, Hans Hoffmann (Franz Rogowski) experiences repeated imprisonment under paragraph 175 of the penal code. Having previously been imprisoned in a concentration camp, Hans is incarcerated again and again for infringing on Nazi anti-gay laws, which are still on the books, and which systematically destroy Hans' basic desire for freedom. Over the decades, however, the imprisoned man develops an unlikely bond with the one steady presence in Hans' life: his cellmate Viktor Kohl (Georg Friedrich), a convicted murderer. What starts as revulsion gradually grows into affection, and eventually even love,
On the review aggregator Web site Rotten Tomatoes, Great Freedom holds an approval rating of 97 percent, the site's critical consensus reading, "With intelligence and sensitivity, Great Freedom draws on past injustices to present a beautifully crafted tribute to the persistence of the human spirit" On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 89 out of 100, indicating "universal acclaim." Described the the U.K.'s The Times as "a quiet and carefully constructed story about the sheer absurdity of the criminalisation of homosexuality, and about the denial of humanity that criminalisation required," Meise's period drama won the Golden Giraldillo at the Seville European Film Festival, and the movie was selected as the Austrian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards.
Additionally, Great Freedom is being presented in the Davenport museum's Free Film at the Figge Series among a selection of distinguished Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard Award winners. Un Certain Regard, meaning "a certain glance," is a prestigious section of the festival that runs parallel to the regular competition for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest award. Un Certain Regard focuses on artistically daring films with unusual styles and non-traditional stories, new trends, and new countries of origin.
Great Freedom will be shown in the Davenport venue's John Deere Auditorium on November 7, admission to the 6;30 p.m. event (with the bar opening at 5 p.m.) is free, and the screening will be followed by the chance to socialize and discuss the movie afterward with a complimentary glass of wine. For more information on the event, call (563)326-7804 and visit FiggeArtMuseum.org.
