The Good Sister's difficult journey to autonomy

The Good Sister (Schwesterherz, 2025) is the feature film debut of Sarah Miro Fischer, last year’s graduate of the Film and Television Academy in Berlin. As the FIPRESCI jury announced in their statement, “the film is crafted from a strong script directed with confidence and maturity, telling a story of violence and assault from an original point of view, based on a loving sibling relationship that provides it with nuance and moral ambiguity.” The director uses and develops well the experience from her short film Spit (2022), realised with the same cinematographer, Selma von Polheim Gravesen.

The Good Sister is a haunting and intimate psychological drama that ventures deep into the emotional and ethical terrain of family, trauma, and accountability. Anchored by a quietly powerful performance from Marie Bloching as Rose, the film eschews sensationalism in favour of nuanced emotional truth. At its core, The Good Sister is about the psychological metamorphosis of a woman who is forced to examine the painful distance between love and external reality, between what she wants to believe and what she must.

The Comfort of Familiarity

At the beginning of the film, Rose is emotionally adrift. A recent breakup has left her seeking stability, which she finds in the most familiar place: her brother Sam’s (Anton Weil) apartment. Their relationship is affectionate, even mutually dependent. They fall into familiar routines such as cooking meals together, sharing idle conversations, and engaging in moments of wordless, familial connection. These scenes are filmed in soft, warm tones, creating a cocoon-like atmosphere around them. Sam is not just her brother; he is her anchor, her protector.

Fischer carefully builds this world of trust and comfort, ensuring that the audience feels just as safe with Sam as Rose does. This is essential, because the film’s emotional power hinges on the fragility of this illusion. We are drawn into Rose’s sense of security, so that when it begins to crumble, we too feel the sting of betrayal.

Shattering illusions

The turning point comes with devastating force: Sam is accused of violent rape by a mutual acquaintance. The accusation acts like a fissure in Rose’s psyche, opening up a chasm between her emotional instincts and the reality with which she is confronted. Initially, her response is flat-out denial. She rationalizes, dismisses, and clings desperately to her constructed image of Sam. To admit to the possibility of his guilt would be to dismantle the very foundation upon which her current identity is built.

The weight of truth

Rose’s evolution does not happen in a single moment: it is a slow, painful peeling away of layers. She begins to isolate herself, first from her friends, and then emotionally from Sam. Fischer and Bloching work in tandem to reveal this withdrawal not through dramatic confrontations, but through small, telling actions: Rose pauses before answering Sam’s questions, avoids eye contact, lingers over memories that used to comfort her but now cause distress.

As the legal case progresses, Rose is asked to take a stand, both literally and figuratively. Her moral crisis is not just whether she believes her brother could have committed such a crime; it is whether she can bear the consequences of acknowledging that he might have. What does it mean to remain loyal to someone when that loyalty causes harm to others? Can familial love excuse silence? These are the heavy questions that Rose must carry, and the film gives her space to weigh them with appropriate complexity.

Embracing reality

The Rose we see in the final act of the film is markedly different from the one we met in the beginning. Her silence is no longer rooted in denial, but in contemplation. Her interactions with Sam become more strained and, eventually, sorrowful. She still loves him, this much is clear; but she no longer shields him with that love.

This transformation is rendered through Bloching’s restrained yet emotionally rich performance. Rather than declaring her change with dramatic speeches, Rose changes in posture, in gaze, in silence. She lets go of the need to resolve everything: to justify, to explain, and accepts ambiguity.

Cinematic techniques

The film’s visual and auditory language are finely attuned to Rose’s psychological state. Cinematographer Selma von Polheim Gravesen employs tight framing and muted colour palettes to convey Rose’s sense of entrapment. Scenes once bathed in soft, familial light grow colder and more sterile. Interiors become confining, and spaces once shared with ease now feel loaded with unspoken tension.

Conclusion: A profound character study

The film explores painful spaces where love and morality stand in opposition, much like in a Greek tragedy. And just like in a Greek tragedy, there is not a single unnecessary scene or even shot in this film. Everything provides us with codes and signs, subtly emphasizing, on one hand, the strength of her dependence on family bonds (e.g., being a next-generation immigrant), and on the other, the significance of the breakthrough in her personal and cultural identity. Rose’s dramatic journey from dependence to autonomy, from denial to ethical maturity, is one of the more intriguingly developed character transformations in contemporary cinema.

By telling her story (in some ways akin to the story of Livia, the protagonist of her short film Spit), Fischer confirms her talent as a director as sensitive, courageous, unafraid to ask difficult questions, and equally unafraid to leave them unanswered.

Hanna Margolis
Edited by Birgit Beumers
©FIPRESCI 2025