ROSE

In Markus Schleinzer's Rose, Sandra Hüller gives a searing performance as a scarred, taciturn soldier who arrives in an isolated German farming village during the chaos of the Thirty Years' War, claiming an abandoned homestead as his birthright. Slowly winning over the suspicious, devoutly Protestant community, he settles into its rhythms of hard labor and faith, all the while concealing that he is a woman who has lived as a man since the battlefield, with no intention of stopping. The longer he stays, the deeper his roots and his lies grow — through property, marriage, even fatherhood — until rumors begin to circle, threatening to unravel everything his disguise has won him. Shot in stark black-and-white, Schleinzer's third feature is a deeply unsettling portrait of gender, identity, and the unfathomable price the community exacts upon Rose for her deception. Hüller won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival; Rose is Austria's submission for Best International Feature at the 2027 Academy Awards.