Co-presented with Telescope Film

KINO! Film Salon is a monthly online club to discuss films from Germany.

How it works: Each month, we choose a German film currently available to stream on U.S. platforms, watch it independently, and come together for a hosted conversation with other fans of German cinema.

At our June session, we’ll discuss Sebastian Meise’s Oscar-shortlisted queer historical prison drama Great Freedom, starring Franz Rogowski and Georg Friedrich.

Across three interwoven periods in mid-century Germany, Holocaust survivor Hans is repeatedly incarcerated for his homosexuality. There he meets Viktor, a convicted murderer, and as Hans returns to prison again and again, the initially tense relationship between them blossoms into something unexpectedly tender.

“Great Freedom explores the legacy of Paragraph 175, the intensely restrictive legislation that criminalized homosexuality in Germany for over a century,” writes KINO! Film Salon host Jim Kolmar. “The film is gripping, moving, and reveals as much about our current freedoms as it does our ignorance of a past we’d rather leave behind.”

Great Freedom world premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the Jury Prize. It was awarded Best Cinematographer and Best Composer at the 2021 European Film Awards and was selected as Austria’s official submission for Best International Feature at the 2022 Academy Awards, where it was shortlisted.
Hosted by Jim Kolmar

Jim programs for SXSW and Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival and was a founding committee member of Festival Internacional de Cine Tulum (FICTU). He has participated in numerous international festival juries, panels, and committees.

KINO! Film Salon is a production of Telescope Film, in partnership with the German Film Office.

Große Freiheit
Dir. Sebastian Meise
Austria/Germany, 2021
117 min.
With Franz Rogowski, Georg Friedrich, Anton von Lucke, Thomas Prenn