NYFF 64: Austria’s “Rose” is much more than merely another Sandra Hüller showcase
Thursday, October 1, 2026 at 10:00PM 
While our TIFF 51 coverage isn’t over – sometimes, it feels like it will go on forever, with Eurocheese and I falling into Sisyphus' fate – one must acknowledge the other big festival of the moment. Right now, the New York Film Festival is blessing audiences with some of the best in world cinema, from September 25 to October 12. As we’ve done in years past, Joanna Sodeman-Taylor will join me in covering the fest from a distance, relying on screeners and whatnot. Hope you enjoy this wild virtual ride.
To kickstart these NYFF musings, why not consider another Best International Oscar submission? This one’s from Austria and last Berlinale’s Best Leading Performance Silver Bear winner, Rose. Indeed, most of the chatter about Markus Schleinzer’s latest has focused on Sandra Hüller’s work, a tour de force at the heart of a film that, nevertheless, is much more complicated than a mere acting showcase. Set in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, Rose is a story assembled from various cases documented in legal archives of the time, about those who were born as women to society’s eyes yet assumed male identities to liberate themselves from the limits of their sex. In the 17th century and beyond, there were and there are many Roses…
