A film by Max Hegewald

Produced by Jan Philip Lange (JUNIFILM)

Drama / 115 min / Germany / 2025 

Language: German

Subtitles: English

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Synopsis

16-year-old Sebastian lives a sheltered life in a small town. His world changes when his family takes in Kolja, the 15-year-old son of a deceased friend of Sebastian’s father. Initially distant, the two boys slowly open up to each other, discovering a closeness and intensity in their bond that surprises them both. As they navigate this new and unspoken connection, their relationship becomes a private world of trust, tension, and shared secrets, challenging everything Sebastian thought he knew about himself.

Director’s note

The incestuous relationship between the two brothers, Sebastian and Kolja, overturns the traditional family concept within Sebastian’s household, unleashes an avalanche of events, and releases long-suppressed tensions among all protagonists.

If one sets aside the question of potential health risks for offspring in an incestuous sibling relationship, one is inevitably confronted with other ethical arguments that justify the prohibition of sibling relationships in Germany: in my research I encountered legal formulations such as “protection of the family” or “protection of the child’s development.” In the end, the subject raises even more profound questions – for instance, whether the traditional family model of “mother, father, child” is in fact a construct protected by state, society, and church, because it represents the smallest, most easily controlled unit of society. An equal, incestuous relationship between siblings, by contrast, appears anarchic.

The family is the smallest building block of a vast system, and anyone who shakes its foundations will be punished. (See the case of the family of “Patrick S.”)

For me, FREE AT HEART is the coming-of-age story of a family. Incest is a German taboo – yet the number of unreported cases of sibling incest is high. Those affected suffer from the “unspeakability” of their situation, out of fear of persecution and legal consequences. In Germany, several cases have ignited media debates that spread far beyond the country’s borders. That FREE AT HEART centers on a constellation of brothers is deliberate: it eliminates biological arguments against incestuous relationships and allows the story to approach the core question more directly – why consensual relationships between siblings are punished so severely under German law. My research was inspired by the report of an affected man from a small town in southern Germany, which I came across in an anonymous forum.

FREE AT HEART tells the story of an extraordinary bond between two people, whose love and closeness is intensified by their emerging sibling connection. The narrative is an experiment that destabilizes the classical family constellation. At the same time, it is the story of a boy searching for his other half.

FREE AT HEART is, in a way, a “Parent Trap” story. It is an encounter with the mirror image of one’s own personality, something many people long for. For Sebastian it also becomes a confrontation with his own desires and fears, since his brother embodies character traits that Sebastian himself is too timid to live out. Sebastian is a passive figure who only becomes active and changes his life through the encounter with his brother, his second half.

The brotherly bond carries within it the motif of the “Doppelgänger,” long present in literature, film, and theatre, and rooted in German literary history (“The German Doppelgaenger”). The meeting with the so-called “evil twin” is, in mythology, the harbinger of impending events. The two characters, drawn to and repelled by one another like magnets, are at the same time inseparably intertwined. Kolja is both mentor and herald of Sebastian’s adolescence.

FREE AT HEART addresses a diverse range of themes and, despite its dramatic turns, the encounter between the two brothers is depicted with great sensitivity, born out of innocence and curiosity. It is about family and connection, about the discovery of love, and about the deep desire for becoming one.

I wanted to create a basin for the actors in which they could move freely yet safely. Rehearsals and scenic improvisations were, for me, an essential part of the character work – along with personal conversations, collaboratively developed character biographies, and dramaturgical constellations with the ensemble.

Of course, FREE AT HEART is also a provocation, but a quiet one, and equally an observation and an experiment, playful and serious.

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