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Strap-On and All, ‘Rose’ Puts Sandra Hüller Back in Oscar Conversation

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The bullet that tore through Rose‘s face now hangs around her neck. Occasionally, she raises it to her mouth and sucks on it, a small, private gesture from a woman whose survival depends on keeping nearly everything about herself private.

As played by Sandra Hüller in Markus Schleinzer’s Rose, she is a veteran of the Thirty Years’ War, which devastated Central Europe from 1618 to 1648. Now she is attempting to settle into a rural German community, acquire land and build a life, all while passing as a man. The trousers grant her freedoms she could never otherwise claim. A marriage to a local woman makes the arrangement considerably more complicated. It is a performance built from watchfulness and restraint, with Hüller allowing glimpses of tenderness, fear and finally fury to emerge from beneath Rose’s carefully maintained exterior.

The role has already earned Hüller the Silver Bear for best leading performance at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival and could bring the Anatomy of a Fall Oscar nominee back into the best actress race. Austria has selected the black-and-white drama as its international feature submission. A new trailer debuted today ahead of the film’s Dec. 11 U.S. theatrical release.

In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, the two discussed the freedom of leaving several central questions unanswered, the homemade device that helped Hüller find the character’s physicality and why Schleinzer refused to make her undress to prove anything.

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Rose evoked several of my favorite films. I’m very drawn to this genre of hiding within gender. I thought of movies like Yentl, Boys Don’t Cry and M. Butterfly. The tension of wondering when they’ll be found out gives those films a simmering intensity. Were those some of your inspirations, Markus?

MARKUS SCHLEINZER I watched all of those films, but that was the second part of the process. The first part of the process was an incident. A friend of mine called me to wish me happy birthday. At the end of the call, she said, “Listen, it’s weird. I just finished reading a book today about a woman who got executed on this very day, your birthday, about 250 years before your birth, because she was wearing pants, because she was trying to live a different life. That’s the reason why she got executed.”

This was very touching to me, and it was the beginning of a very long process of research. I started on women in pants: Why had women chosen to wear pants? To gain more freedom. I think it was two to three years, this research process, in which I was able to learn about 300 women across three different centuries.

These are the women who got caught, the women we are aware of, so the figures must be much bigger. The reason why these women chose this kind of life was always different. Most of them tried to avoid getting married to someone they disliked. Some wanted to avoid rape or sexual harassment. Some wanted to have access to education, like in one of the films you mentioned, Yentl. Then there were women who wanted to fight for their countries and were not allowed to do so as women, so they chose to live like men. Some women just wanted to follow their husbands into war. There were transgender people or lesbians, I think, of course, but in those days there wasn’t an idea or words for this.

All very different reasons, but the goal was always the same: to have more freedom, live more freely, have the possibility to do something which is already allowed to others. And as my first two movies had dealt with the so-called outsiders of society, I thought, OK, why not do it again, proceed with this research and this time talk about the biggest group of outsiders in the world: women. It was very interesting. The interesting thing is, when it comes to cross-dressing movies with men in dresses, what they have to do to reveal their gender is take off the wig. That’s what they do mostly. And what women in trousers always have to do is …

SANDRA HÜLLER Completely undress.

SCHLEINZER Yeah, completely undress to prove their gender. When we started writing the script, I said, OK, I want to try writing something on this topic without the naked body, because I don’t think a story like this needs to prove it through the naked body. Why? How often do I have to fill out some form on the internet, what’s your gender, male, female, diverse, whatever, and how often have I ticked “male” without sending pics of my naked body to prove it? So this was the beginning of this project.

Is it true you wrote a novel version of Rose before you wrote the screenplay?

SCHLEINZER I was a casting director for 17 years and I read the traditional scripts, but I dislike the form. As an author, I get much more in contact with a person when I choose to write in prose, like a novel, because writing in that style you can discuss thoughts, you can discuss fears, whatever. This is what I like very much.

We started in the early years of Rose, when she was a child, and the novel ends where the film ends. It was about 1,000 pages. And then I thought, “Okay, you idiot, no one is going to give you millions of dollars to make a 45-hour movie.” So we just skipped the first 800 pages and concentrated on the last 200 pages of the novel, because that could survive as a movie by itself.

You should release that book. I’d love to see what else happened in her life.

HÜLLER Yeah, Markus, just do it. Just release the book.

SCHLEINZER I don’t know. I’m not this merchandising guy who does something and then has to shoot out more, more, more, more, keep the money coming. Maybe in some 20 years I will do so.

Sandra, how did you approach a character as quietly complex as Rose? Was her facial scarring something you were hesitant about, or something you thought helped you find the character?

HÜLLER The script was so poetic, and there was so much information in it about the emotional state of the people. It didn’t have the usual form. It was written like a poem. Even the [stage directions] came in this special [prose] form that Markus had found. So that set the inner tone for everything we did. It gave a certain tenderness to everything we did, despite the brutality of the things that are actually happening. I can only thank Markus that he wrote it in this manner, because it was so rare. It did something very special to the whole work.

As for the actual deformation of Rose’s face, it took us some time to find it. I remember, Markus, that you sent me a picture of a woman who had a scar from war, very early on. So I got familiar with the thought of having something put on my face. It was a pretty interesting construction. There had to be some pulling of the face up, and it would be clipped into the hair, like with a rubber band that kept it in place, and above that would be the form of the actual hole in the face, the scar. That’s something I’d never experienced before, and I was curious how it works when you can only use half of your face, and maybe just your eyes, for the things you want to express. I find limitations in acting very interesting. They force you to choose a certain form and help you find the essence of something when you leave a lot out. I found that very, very helpful. And it was, of course, a true pleasure to be in the makeup trailer of Anette Keiser for two hours every day. So that was always a good start.

And then there was also the costume, of course. Markus referenced the trousers, the boots.

HÜLLER Markus, you remember, you gave me your personal shoes, which I would have loved to keep, but I didn’t. A lot of Markus’ private life is in there, and that’s something you are aware of every day when you wear these things. You’re aware of the details and of all the love that has been put in there. It was meant to disguise something, and at the same time it was meant to give a certain feeling of strength, of course, because wearing armor does something to the body. Then we find out how her “horn” [a homemade strap-on sex device] that we discover later in the film is placed on the body, and that would also help to find out how to move and all of these things. Markus is someone who cares about all of these things. It’s something I would never have had to find out alone.

It’s never specified what Rose’s impulse is for passing as a man, beyond the freedom of it. Did you come to a conclusion in your own mind as to whether she was trans, or a lesbian, or just a woman who wanted more opportunities for herself? What was your take on it?

HÜLLER It’s part of the story that we don’t know, and it’s part of her personal freedom that she doesn’t tell anything about it, and I respected that. That’s all I can say. And as Markus said before, this character is an essence of hundreds of female characters from that time who chose this exact path, and their choices were very different from each other. So why would we decide on one reason?

And yet there is a real love story going on between you and Caro Braun’s character, which is very heartwarming to watch unfold. But one thing you never find out is how she got pregnant with their child. Did you intentionally leave that a mystery as well?

SCHLEINZER Well, I did, because I didn’t want to have this. I don’t want to look at people only as victims, and giving her this story might have put her in the victim corner. I think the things that happen to us should not define us completely.

HÜLLER Caro said such a beautiful thing about that pregnancy when we were talking about the film in Berlin. She chose, for herself, that it is something that happened with pleasure. And that is something I love so much about her as a person, that she is choosing this story, although we don’t know the truth. We just have to respect it.

SCHLEINZER When we were working on this, I went to Caro and said, “OK, I know you cannot play this without knowing how this happened to you, so find your own story.” And the funny thing is that she came back and said yes, now she knows everything, but she didn’t give it away. I asked her, “Who is the father?” She said, “None of your business.” Every time she gets asked in interviews, she always says, “None of your business.” And this I like very much. What do we really have to know about other people? Knowing too much, or knowing something about other people, so very often turns into judging. And is this a good thing? Does judging mean understanding? I doubt it.

Was Sandra always the actress you had in mind for Rose?

SCHLEINZER The part was written for Sandra. When it comes to a German-speaking part like this, there’s no way not to think about Sandra. So I stalked her. I watched all the movies I could get, to get my impression of how she does it, my impression of her enormous talent. And then I had the joy of acting alongside her in a movie, Sisi & I. I was pretty bad in that movie, because all I did was look at her and try to figure out, OK, [how would she do it?] I never told her this was written for her.

HÜLLER It doesn’t always help when you know.

SCHLEINZER Someone can write something for you and it still is shit. So I was very, very, very happy that she said yes.

Can we talk about the scene when the townspeople confront Rose and you finally lose your cool? They reduce her identity to anatomy, while she’s arguing for her right to exist on her own terms. It brought to mind the trans and anti-trans debates you read every day on social media. What did that scene mean to you when you were making it?

HÜLLER Well, we can talk about it on many levels. There’s a practical level: a night shoot in the dark, in the cold, with a lot of people who probably want to go home, so you have to really do it well so you don’t waste everybody’s time.

I like the idea that she is going into the confrontation in the first place. She’s not shying away from that discussion, and she’s basically asking, Markus, please correct me if I’m wrong, whether anything she’s done for the community changes if her gender were a different one. And I think that’s fair, because obviously the answer is no. The things she has contributed to the village and to the people there, what she taught them and how she showed up, don’t change in the slightest if people find out she is not a man.

It’s heartbreaking to watch you have to even make that case for yourself when you’ve done so much for the community, and they still don’t care. They still want blood.

SCHLEINZER You will never fit. Is this how we want to live together as a community on this planet? I don’t know what kind of future mankind has, but this is what I see so very often. This could be a win-win situation. What she’s doing there, she’s saving a life, she’s creating jobs, she’s paying people, they learn how to read and write, things like this. She’s doing what she can, and she just wants to do it within the existing community.

HÜLLER But it’s not for her to decide. That’s what we learned there.

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Woody Allen Movie and More Madrid Shoots: A Chat With Its Film Officer

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September 28, 2026

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Raúl Torquemada is a busy man. He is the director of the Madrid Film Office, the audiovisual office of Madrid’s City Council, which is working with local and global film, series and advertising productions that are shooting in the Spanish capital and featuring it in prominent roles.

For 2025, the Madrid municipal office disclosed that feature film shoots set a new record of 71, handily exceeding the previous high of 47 set in 2022.

From next week, Woody Allen is scheduled to shoot his latest movie in Madrid. Still untitled, the filmmaker is understood to have agreed that “Madrid” will be part of the title. Also among the conditions for the city’s financial backing of the project is that it must showcase Madrid via a certain percentage of exterior scenes in the film.

Film and series buffs have in recent years spent screen time with the Spanish capital thanks to such series as AMC‘s The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon and Netflix’s Money Heist and spinoff Berlin, with such recent productions as Netflix’s Safe Houses and HBO’s Carlota joining that illustrious company. Among the movies that the city has recently hosted have been 2026 festival circuit favorites, such as Florian Zeller’s Bunker, starring Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Stephen Graham, Paul Dano and Patrick Schwarzenegger, La bola negra (The Black Ball), directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, and Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas.

Torquemada will be among the busy attendees of this week’s sixth edition of Iberseries & Platino Industria, which brings Spanish- and Portuguese-language content creators and executives from Europe, Latin America and the U.S. to Madrid.

THR caught up with the Madrid film commissioner by email to find out what is new and how Madrid continues to go from strength to strength.

Has Madrid further enhanced its appeal as a production hub over the past year or two with financial incentives or qualitative support programs, or how do you explain the city’s continued success in attracting film and TV productions?

It is not just an impression. Madrid hosted the filming of 71 films and 52 series in 2025, reflecting the strength of an industry built over many years. Its appeal combines outstanding creative and technical talent, experienced production companies, diverse locations and excellent international connectivity. The City Council supports this through close collaboration with the industry and practical assistance from Madrid Film Office, part of the Madrid City Council’s Tourism Area, helping productions find locations, connect with local professionals and navigate filming in the city.

Alongside Spain’s national tax incentives, the City Council’s grants for film production, promotion and distribution had provided nearly €15 million ($17 million) between 2021 and March 2026. This year, we also launched support for the development of series and miniseries. Our commitment is long-term as we want productions to choose Madrid with confidence, generating skilled jobs and opportunities for local businesses while bringing the city’s identity and cultural richness to audiences worldwide.

Raúl Torquemada, director of the Madrid Film Office

Courtesy of Madrid Film Office

What do you think is the most overlooked reason for Madrid’s success in attracting film and TV shoots and companies? I feel everyone by now knows about the beauty of the city, its great food and its skilled crews…

Perhaps the most overlooked factor is the confidence Madrid gives producers. Beyond its locations and skilled crews, the city brings together the connections, accommodation, infrastructure and specialist services needed to organize a complex production. This makes Madrid a practical base for projects filming across Spain and gives companies strong foundations for establishing a lasting presence here. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is a very good example of that model.

That confidence also comes from having an experienced industry, a solid ecosystem, including VFX, animation, post-production, and virtual production and a city council committed to supporting it. Through Madrid Film Office, we help producers connect with local expertise and navigate the city. For a producer, knowing where to turn when a challenge arises can be decisive. For Madrid, those relationships help turn individual shoots into sustained investment, skilled employment and opportunities for local talent

What are some of the big films and series that have shot in Madrid in the past year?

Those titles are actually very good examples of the internationalization we are seeing. Florian Zeller’s Bunker, starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem alongside Stephen Graham and Paul Dano, filmed in Madrid and London and is a French-Spanish co-production involving Madrid-based MOD Producciones.

Safe Houses also filmed in Madrid in 2026: it is an Apple TV+ international espionage series, starring Ana de Armas and Jennifer Connelly, with a story that itself revolves around events in Madrid. And Carlota, the large-scale historical production from Sony Pictures Television for HBO Max, also filmed in Madrid and elsewhere in Spain, as well as Mexico and Colombia.

This year, Madrid is also receiving the filming of The Interrogator, a spy drama series for Fox, Love Affair, a Korean drama series for Netflix or the sci-fi show Murderbot for Apple TV+.

Those projects sit alongside the international productions we have been tracking over the last year or so, such as Day Drinker, directed by Marc Webb; The Beast, directed by Renny Harlin with Samuel L. Jackson; Ceniza en la boca, directed by Diego Luna; and further seasons of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon and Has Fallen.

And there is a very strong domestic slate too, including new works by Pedro Almodóvar, Los Javis and Rodrigo Sorogoyen, as well as series such as Berlín, Reina Roja and Anatomía de un instante.

What interests us is not simply the number of titles, but the range: Spanish projects, European and Ibero-American co-productions and increasingly ambitious U.S. and U.K. projects are all making use of the same Madrid ecosystem.

The word is out that Woody Allen’s new film will start shooting in Madrid next week and feature the city like a star. What can you share about how important a project that is for Madrid and its infrastructure and about the financial support the city and region provide for it? And is it true that Madrid will be in the film title under the contract with the city?

Woody Allen has a distinctive ability to make cities part of his cinematic legacy. New York, Paris or Rome have become integral to his stories, leaving images that stay with audiences long after the film ends. For Madrid, the opportunity lies in that lasting cultural presence, bringing the city’s character to international audiences while showcasing the talent and professional capacity of our audiovisual industry.

Filming is scheduled to begin on Oct. 5, with Madrid as its principal setting and much of the shoot taking place in locations in the city center. The project is a contemporary comedy produced by Wanda Visión, Gravier Productions Inc. and 3Six9 Studios, and the announced cast includes Alexi Wasser (Messy, Girls), Jemima Kirke (Girls, Sex Education), Peter Vives (El tiempo entre costuras, Velvet), Marton Csokas (El Señor de los Anillos, The Equalizer) and Jakob Oftebro (Kon-Tiki, Hamilton).

As already announced, the City Council is supporting the project through a €1.5 million ($1.7 million) institutional sponsorship aimed at promoting Madrid internationally and the announced plans include “Madrid” in the title. The regional government is also supporting the production; questions about its contribution are best addressed to them. Further creative and production details are for the filmmakers to share. Our focus is on the opportunity this represents for Madrid’s cultural profile and local creative economy.

Madrid filming for action-thriller film ‘All the Names of God’

Courtesy of Second Gen Pictures/TriPictures/Madrid Film Office

Are there any key numbers that Madrid has hit in terms of TV and film productions in recent years?

The clearest record is film production. In 2025 alone, the city hosted at least 71 feature films, 52 series and more than 410 medium and large-scale commercials, while the Madrid Film Office provided more than 4,115 specialized assistance services, almost 7 percent more than the previous year. The 71 features are particularly significant because they comfortably surpass the 47 filmed in 2022, which had previously been our highest figure since the Madrid Film Office was established.

But perhaps the numbers I find most revealing are the economic ones. Our recent study with the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid estimates that feature films and series filmed in Madrid generated €1.54 billion ($1.75 billion) in economic output in the city between 2021 and 2024, supporting more than 10,100 full-time-equivalent jobs, generating €883.6 million ($1.0 billion) in gross value added and €367.3 million ($418 million) in tax revenues.

That gives us a much clearer picture of why filming matters and that the industry has a substantial multiplier effect across hospitality, transport, construction, professional services and many other parts of the city’s economy. This enables us to gradually build an increasingly detailed and comprehensive picture of the audiovisual sector’s contribution to the city and the region, incorporating data from the various studies we carry out as part of our strategic focus on the generation and analysis of quantitative data.

How important is Iberseries & Platino Industria for showcasing Madrid as a production and creative hub?

It has been enormously valuable because it allows Madrid to demonstrate something we consider fundamental to our positioning: we are not only a location or a production center, but also a meeting point between Europe and Ibero-America. Iberseries & Platino Industria brings platforms, broadcasters, producers, creators, distributors, buyers, financiers and talent together in Madrid, creating opportunities for co-production, financing and internationalization.

The fifth edition attracted more than 2,700 accredited professionals from 50 countries, half of them international, as well as over 1,500 companies and more than 180 buyers and commissioners from 30 countries.

For the Madrid Film Office, our support has been sustained from the beginning because the event fits perfectly with our wider strategy. We want Madrid to be the place where an Ibero-American creator can meet a European producer, where a Spanish company can find an international partner and where a global platform can discover talent, projects and production capacity. That positioning also connects with our support for initiatives such as ECAM Forum, the Platino Awards or the Film Academy Residencies, among other programs. In that sense, Iberseries & Platino Industria does more than showcase Madrid: by bringing international business and talent here every year, it actually helps build the ecosystem we are promoting.

Is there anything else you would like to highlight?

Our ambition is to ensure that growth in filming creates lasting value for Madrid. That means attracting international productions and co-productions while strengthening local companies and talent. In line with the decentralization strategy of the Madrid City Council’s Tourism Area, which oversees Madrid Film Office, we also want to spread filming activity more widely across Madrid’s 21 districts. Areas such as Usera, Villaverde, Carabanchel and Tetuán offer distinctive settings and new storytelling possibilities, helping extend the economic and cultural benefits of filming to more neighborhoods.

This growth must work for residents too. Our Best Practices Guide for Filming encourages positive coexistence between productions, residents and local businesses. Alongside this, we are developing screen tourism, promoting Madrid’s audiovisual heritage and connecting emerging talent with the industry. Better data will help us assess the sector’s impact and guide our work. Ultimately, we want productions to choose Madrid and companies, professionals and creators to find lasting reasons to stay, return and grow here.

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Kane Parsons On Short-Form, Bill Kramer On Oscars YouTube Deal: Zurich

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September 28, 2026

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The youth demographic has been key to fuelling this summer’s box office boom.

Backrooms director Kane Parsons and Academy boss Bill Kramer were among those taking part in a Deadline-moderated Zurich Summit panel this past weekend which addressed theatrical success in the age of YouTube, TikTok and other online platforms.

Kramer thanked YouTube native Parsons for his film Backroom, which helped energise young audiences, and also noted how the youth demographic flocks to Academy screenings of classic cinema.

“Your fandom traveled from YouTube to the theaters, and we saw the same thing with Curry [Obsession director Curry Barker]. Young people want to go back to movie theaters…YouTube can inform a theatrical fandom.”

He continued: “We see this in our Academy Museum. We have two theaters, which show classic films and rep programming, but more than half of our ticket buyers are under the age of 40, and we sell out every screen. People love seeing movies in movie theaters. We just needed to attract new fans, and you helped to do that this summer.”

The 20 year-old Parsons, whose record-breaking Backrooms took $400M off a $10M budget, said he thought it was “reductive” to think that people his age were only interested in short-form content.

“I feel like this sentiment is weaponized, like it is algorithmically incentivized, but it’s not really something I think most people enjoy about their own wiring. They don’t love that their attention spans are being sucked into the spiral of mostly consuming stuff that is short. They’re still [enjoying] going into a closed room [cinema] without outside interferences.”

Later in the discussion, Kramer talked about the Academy’s eye-catching deal to make YouTube the free-to-stream broadcasting home of the Oscars from 2029, ending ABC’s run showing the awards.

Deadline moderator Andreas Wiseman asked whether the pact felt like a risk.

“Not at all,” replied Kramer. “It almost feels risky to not do it because we’re looking at the future. With each month, a larger percentage of the TV-watching audience is on YouTube.”

He continued: “We have a great partnership with Disney right now. They’ve been amazing partners and will continue to be for the next two years. But we’re already deep in discussions with [YouTube CEO] Neal Mohan and his team, and I think you’ll see a very different-looking Oscars that allows you to engage with the show in more interactive and deep ways than we can right now. It’ll be free to everyone around the world in over 30 languages. Right now, in certain markets, they show a reduced version of the Oscars. This allows everyone around the world to see the exact same telecast at the same time. That’s important to us.”

He expanded: “As we become more global as an organization, the best way for us to reach a global audience of film lovers, film fans, young artists is YouTube. I think the timing [syncs] this year with Obsession and Backrooms, and with the direction moving from YouTube to theatrical. We’re an organization that celebrates theatrical movie making, but at the same time, the Oscars is a TV show, and we want to reach a large audience. YouTube allows us to directly engage with our audience, our viewers, film fans, in a way that we just can’t do right now. Right now, more people outside of the U.S. watch the Oscars than in the U.S. The deal allows us to capture that audience and a lot more. That’s great for the Academy and it’s great for the films of that year, and it’s also great for film lovers around the world.”

The reporting at the time – and Deadline’s understanding – is that the deal was comfortably into the nine figures. Kramer wouldn’t be drawn on stage as to how lucrative the pact is but smiled and called it “a very good deal”.

ABC had been back in for the rights. Netflix was also in the mix.

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Diablo Cody Movie Always, Roxanne In Works With True North (EXCLUSIVE)

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54 minutes ago

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September 28, 2026

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EXCLUSIVE: Diablo Cody has lined up familiar faces as partners for her next film project, Always, Roxanne: The film will be produced by Nathan Kahane via his True North banner, as well as Mason Novick, Deadline has learned.

Cody’s script follows Roxanne, an obsessive high school senior who goes to her ex-boyfriend’s college campus to win him back, only to wage war on his new girlfriend and accidentally find the first person who truly understands her.

The film, which does not yet have a director, extends a longstanding creative partnership between Cody and Novick, who have now worked together on over 10 projects: Novick was Oscar-nominated for producing Cody’s Best Picture nominee Juno and is currently working with her on a sequel to her cult classic Jennifer’s Body.

Kahane worked with Cody & Novick on the films Juno and Young Adult during his time at Mandate Pictures. He told us, “I couldn’t imagine a better time to reunite with my former collaborators Diabo Cody and Mason Novick than a moment when younger audiences are rediscovering the joy of the theatrical experience.”

Best known for breakout with Juno, the coming-of-age romance that brought her the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Cody’s filmography also includes titles like Tully, Ricki and the Flash, Lisa Frankenstein and more, in addition to those previously mentioned. She is represented by WME and MXN Entertainment.

While at his previous companies Mandate and Good Universe, Kahane shepherded the Neighbors and Harold and Kumar comedy franchises, as well as films sfuch as This Is the End, Don’t Breathe, Good Boys and Stranger Than Fiction. Prior to launching True North, he was President of the Motion Picture Group at Lionsgate.

Other credits for Novick include (500) Days of Summer and the recent Forbidden Fruits.

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