Austria has chosen Nice Freedom, a jail drama starring Franz Rogowski as a homosexual German repeatedly arrested for “deviant practices” within the many years following World Struggle I, to characterize the nation for the 2022 Oscars in the very best worldwide characteristic class.
Sebastian Meise’s intense jail drama, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Sure Regard sidebar this yr, appears on the mostly- forgotten historical past of Germany’s anti-homosexual legal guidelines, legal guidelines relationship again to 1871 which led to mass persecution and homicide of homosexuals beneath the Nazi regime, however which remained on the books in West Germany after World Struggle II up till the late Sixties.
Rogowski performs Hans, convicted beneath the infamous anti-gay legislation Paragraph 175, who, after World Struggle II, is transferred from a focus camp to serve out the remainder of his sentence in a West German jail. Georg Friedrich co-stars as Viktor, an older, homophobic inmate, who initially violently rejects being bunked up with Hans. The movie strikes in between a number of post-war intervals, illustrating how anti-gay sentiment and the criminalization of homosexuality continued for many years till Paragraph 175 was lastly abolished in Germany in 1969.
Tiny Austria has punched above its weight on the Oscars, the place the nation twice taken the worldwide characteristic honor, for Stefan Ruzowitzky’s The Counterfeiters in 2007 and Michael Haneke’s Amour in 2012.
The shortlist for the worldwide characteristic class on the 2022 Oscars will probably be unveiled on Dec. 21. Nominations will probably be introduced on Feb. 8 and the 94th Academy Awards will probably be held on March 27.
