New Rose Trailer Proves Sandra Huller Is Coming for the Oscar

MUBI dropped the new Rose trailer this week, and for a small foreign-language period drama it has gathered a remarkable pile of credentials. The film stars Sandra Hüller as a soldier in early seventeenth-century Germany, and her performance already won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at this year's Berlin International Film Festival. Austria has chosen it as its official submission for Best International Feature at the ninety-ninth Academy Awards. The Rose trailer runs about two and a half minutes, and it makes a simple case: watch this performance.

Most American viewers have never heard of the film. That is likely to change when it opens in select United States theaters on December eleventh, and the Rose trailer is the first real push of the campaign.

What the Rose trailer shows

The story is set during the Thirty Years' War. A small, quiet stranger arrives at a secluded Protestant village somewhere in Germany, his face marked by a scar, and claims to be the rightful heir of a long-abandoned farmstead. He produces a document to support it. Over time he wins the villagers over, proving himself hard-working and God-fearing, and the community gradually accepts him. What the Rose trailer only hints at is the secret under the whole story: Rose was born a woman and has built a life presenting as a man.

According to The Film Stage's coverage of the trailer, the official synopsis calls it "the true and twisted tale of a deceiver of land and folk, who, defying her birth as a woman, comported herself as a man and committed many a wicked deed." The trailer leans on the deception, but the film is really about the cost of being a woman in a world where property, safety, and a public voice all require being a man. Director Markus Schleinzer, who co-wrote the film with Alexander Brom, keeps returning to people trying to survive inside systems built to contain them. His earlier films Michael and Angelo worked the same ground.

Hüller plays Rose with almost no ornament. She is watchful and spare, a person who has learned that being noticed is dangerous, and the trailer suggests the performance works through restraint rather than speeches. According to Rory O'Connor's review for The Film Stage, the film earns its period texture honestly, and he quoted the film's own line to explain Rose's bargain: "There is more freedom in trousers." The costumes, the candlelight, the plain-spoken acting all feel lived in rather than dressed up, which is exactly what the Rose trailer is selling.

The awards case is already loud

Since Berlin, the film has kept collecting laurels. Hüller received a Silver Medallion at the Telluride Film Festival, and the film has continued through the festival circuit including New York. Critics have been unusually unified. The film sits at one hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes across 27 reviews with an average score of 8.1, and at 88 on Metacritic from thirteen critics, which the site flags as universal acclaim. According to The Playlist's Berlin review, Rafa Sales Ross singled out Hüller's "stunning lead turn" and the film's treatment of gender as a social construction.

That kind of critical wall is what awards campaigns are built on. As reported by Just Jared this week, Hüller is a frontrunner for Oscar nominations in both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the twenty-twenty-seven race, in the lead category for Rose and in the supporting category for either Digger or Project Hail Mary. According to the prediction market Kalshi, her chances of a Best Actress nomination stand at 62 percent, ranking her fourth right now, and sixth for a supporting nod. A double nomination is rare, but the numbers say it is within reach.

MUBI's rollout suggests the distributor believes it too. The company holds the film in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Turkey, and Latin America, and it opened in German cinemas back in April before the American date was set. The Rose trailer is the opening move. A slow, careful release is how a distributor nurses a small film through an entire awards season instead of spending it in a weekend. As reported by FirstShowing, the film already opened in Germany this spring, so American audiences are the last stop on a long campaign. More on this week's pop culture in our look at Rihanna's gold skirt suit at Paris Fashion Week, and the season's biggest story remains the Bill Gates AI warning. You can test your news knowledge with the September 28 news quiz.