Written with the help of Claude, Grok and Chatgpt…
In the streets of 1904 St. Gallen, Switzerland, Friedas Fall (or Frieda’s Case) unfolds like a tightly wound spring, ready to snap under the weight of societal judgment. Rooted in the true saga of seamstress Frieda Keller (1879–1942), this debut feature from director Maria Brendle—having world-premiered at the Zurich Film Festival—transforms a scandalous trial into a piercing exploration of double standards in shame, morality, and freedom, especially among people struggling with poverty and despair.
On October 16, 2025, this powerhouse Swiss-German drama made its Vancouver premiere at UBC’s Peña Room, presented by the Consulate General of Switzerland (Consul General Thomas Schneider) and the Deputy Consul General of Germany (Dirk Jakobi), in collaboration with the UBC German Student Association. With a diverse crowd of Swiss expats, German community members, locals, and eager UBC students filling the seats (first-come, first-served, naturally), the evening kicked off with complimentary pizzas and drinks before the film—fuelling animated pre-screening chats about international topics in film, life and upcoming events.
Premiering internationally at the Victoria Film Festival 2025, where it snagged the Best Feature Film Award, the 105-minute measured runtime earned a well-deserved 7.1 IMDb rating and strong festival buzz. It’s a film that lingers like the chill of an Alpine winter, compelling viewers to confront how far we’ve come, and how much remains unchanged—especially after a post-screening Q&A with Dr. Florian Gassner (UBC), who unpacked the historical context with insight, allowing us to get a glimpse of what life was like in a small village in Switzerland at the turn of the century..
At its core, Friedas Fall traces the heartbreaking unraveling of Frieda Keller (a luminous, haunted Julia Buchmann in her breakout role), a 25-year-old seamstress convicted of murdering her five-year-old son Ernst—born of rape by her married employer. The fast-paced story begins on June 7, 1904, when hikers unearthed Ernst’s body in a muddy thicket near Tablat, strangled with string and hidden for six to eight weeks.
Arrested days later after nursery sisters identified his clothes, Frieda confessed instantly: overwhelmed by shame over her unwed motherhood and terror of destitution, she saw no escape. Her trial opened November 11 at the St. Gallen Cantonal Court; despite her lawyer’s pleas highlighting her desperation, rigid laws ignored mitigating factors, delivering a death sentence on November 12.
Brendle, drawing from Michèle Minelli’s incisive screenplay, masterfully layers these betrayals—her mother’s death, her sister’s rejection, the lack of suppor from her potential suitor, the orphanage’s abandonment and complete lack of support when her son was just four—showing how each chipped away at Frieda’s ability to cope with single motherhood, starvation, rejection and finger-pointing.
Buchmann delivers the film’s most compelling performance. Her character’s initial innocence gradually erodes under the weight of social judgment — judgment that conveniently absolves the married man who raped her and fathered her child. Everyone knew what happened. No one wanted to admit it. The man refused to acknowledge the boy as his son, showed no grief at his death, and told the prosecutor the case had nothing to do with him. He had even raped her older sister.
Yet only a handful of women in the story showed compassion or mercy, refusing to let the men in their lives condemn her without considering the full picture. The stakes were particularly high given that those men — the prosecutor and defence lawyer — now held her fate in their hands. As a Canadian viewer, I found myself hoping for redemption. I wanted the happy ending, but it never came.
What elevates Friedas Fall beyond a straightforward biopic is its deft weaving of subtle subplots that illuminate the era’s absurd hypocrisies. As pointed out by Professor Gassner, the bicycle emerges as a symbol of encroaching female autonomy—and the backlash it provoked. Some late-19th-century doctors warned that—especially for women—using the newfangled contraption could lead to a terrifying medical condition: bicycle face.
As the Literary Digest noted in 1895, “the unconscious effort to MAINTAIN one’s balance tends to produce a wearied and exhausted ‘bicycle face'”—describing it as “usually flushed, but sometimes pale, often with lips more or less drawn, and the beginning of dark shadows under the eyes, and always with an expression of weariness.” Elsewhere, others said the condition was “characterized by a hard, clenched jaw and bulging eyes.”
Whispers of this pseudoscientific myth ripple through the town in the film, underscoring how even minor freedoms of women were curtailed. Married men, meanwhile, are portrayed as untouchable; Frieda’s assailant strolls free, his “honour” intact, while she is branded an evil murderess. Even though he is the father of the child who was killed, he insists that he had nothing to do with it. These threads aren’t hammered home with heavy-handed exposition but emerge organically, like the creak of a chain on a forbidden ride—prompting knowing nods and the occasional laugh from the audience. The only thing the rapist did was to give her a small amount of money, which did not last long, but somehow made him feel better.
According to the TagBlatt, “She had no chance to defend herself. The private law code for the Canton of Thurgau stated at the time: A “female person” who becomes involved with a married man deserves no favor of the law, but must “bear the consequences of her immorality herself.” A husband could assault another woman without having to fear any consequences,” says writer Michèle Minelli.”
The courtroom becomes the arena for broader reckonings, where male authority clashes against glimmers of empathy—and where the film’s most nuanced relationships shine. Prosecutor Walter Gmür (a steely Stefan Merki) embodies the era’s rigid justice—condemning Frieda to death with clinical detachment, blind to the childless void in his own marriage. Yet he and his wife Erna (Rachel Braunschweig) still had a supportive relationship and enjoyed spending time together, even though women were considered subordinate to their husbands, with their legal existence often “suspended” during marriage. Socially, a husband was typically considered the head of the household, while the wife’s primary role was within the domestic sphere.
Their domestic scenes provide brief moments of relief in an otherwise tense film. Erna wields power the way women of that era had to — through subtle manipulation and strategic patience. She withholds care for her husband’s toothache until he does what she wants. She pulls him back when his emotions get the better of him, protecting his public image. She plans dinner parties designed to advance his career.
Yet she also works at the jail, looks after the accused woman, and gives her paper to write out her story or cloth to make clothes. Her quiet intelligence and compassion stand in sharp contrast to her husband’s bluster. She studies case files by lamplight, her insights initially dismissed as feminine whimsy. But in the end, she gets her way in more things than anyone realizes, and her observations quietly influence the proceedings.
Across the aisle, defense lawyer Arnold Janggen (Maximilian Simonischek) grapples with his own awakening, bolstered by his free-spirited Berliner wife, Gesine (a vibrant Marlene Tanczik). A bold, outspoken force from the big city, Gesine fears no confrontation—she pedals brazenly through St. Gallen’s cobbles, smuggling support to Frieda and railing against a world where women couldn’t open bank accounts, vote, or even marry without paternal or adult approval.
These women, from the margins, form an unspoken alliance, their solidarity a radical act in a town that views poor single mothers as moral lepers. The movie also show-cased how much the church did and did not do to support the many women who gave up their children to orphanages. Dr. Gassner’s Q&A explained how in Germany, for example, the churches are still there to support orphans, foster children, single mothers and anyone else needing help. Society has still not seen fit to set up charities outside of religious institutions.
Visually, Brendle and cinematographer Sophie Winistörfer craft a world of muted grays and flickering gaslight, evoking the suffocating propriety of bourgeois Switzerland. The score, sparse and piano-driven, amplifies the tension without veering into melodrama—a restraint praised in reviews for avoiding graphic violence, letting implication do the gut-wrenching work. If there’s a quibble, it’s that certain scenes lean too simplistically into dramatic shorthand, occasionally sacrificing nuance for clarity.
Consider the courtroom crowd: jeering for Frieda’s execution at the trial’s start, then bursting into applause by the end—a turnaround that feels more like Hollywood wish-fulfillment than the gritty realism of 1904 public opinion, where Catholic outlets like Die Ostschweiz branded her a “cold-blooded murderer.” Compounding this, as Professor Gassner astutely noted in our Q&A, Gesine the Berliner edges into caricature territory: her larger-than-life flair as the “modern woman” archetype rings a touch too stereotypical, less a flesh-and-blood individual than a symbol dialed up for effect.
These are minor flecks on an otherwise unflinching canvas. The film’s power lies in its refusal to sanitize: Frieda’s crime is unforgivable, yet Brendle forces us to tally the crimes committed against her—by bosses, families, institutions, and a legal code that sentenced women to death for surviving. Our Vancouver screening amplified this, with the communal pizza-fueled vibe fostering a sense of shared outrage and hope. We were also asked about if we would ever support a women who murdered her child at the beginning of the event, and then how we felt afterwards. I think most people realized that there was a difference between a cold-blooded murderess and someone who felt they had no choice and were driven to desparation.
Ultimately, Friedas Fall isn’t just about one woman’s story; it’s a catalyst for Switzerland’s slow thaw toward equality. There were so many subtle details describing the discrepancy between men and women in this movie, like for example, Keller’s mother confessed that she herself had also given birth to a child out of wedlock, conceived with her late husband, and that, abandoned, she had strangled the newborn in despair. (she was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment)
Media pressure mounted, culminating in the Cantonal Council’s pardon on November 28, 1904 (156–1 vote), commuting her sentence to life in solitary silence. Frieda endured 15 gruelling years, emerging shattered with depression and delirium, finally freed on November 25, 1919, thanks to her sisters’ pleas. Her ordeal sparked a landmark revision to the Swiss Criminal Code, mandating consideration of motives in homicide cases. In 2025, as we mark the centennial of women’s suffrage in many nations (Switzerland lagged until 1971), Brendle’s film feels urgently contemporary—a reminder that progress is fragile, built on the blood and tears of the overlooked.
It’s a vital, visceral watch: compassionate without pity, angry without preaching. For anyone grappling with the enduring wage of silence, this is essential cinema. Grade: A- Catch it next at local screenings or stream soon—don’t miss out on this slice of history (pizza optional).
The final mention by Dr. Gassner was to mention that the movie did end up with a bit of a redemption arc, almost religious in nature. She was sorry she had done it, she wanted to redeem herself, the solitary confinement cell had a beautiful desk for her to continue writing her story and she did not suffer the death penalty. But when Frieda is released from solitary confinement after 15 years, she is a broken woman. Despite everything, she slowly finds her way back to somewhat of a normal life. She spends ten years with a friend at Lake Thun and works there in a hotel. Later she suffers strokes; in 1942 she dies in the Münsterlingen Psychiatric Clinic.
Here are 7 hashtags for the movie “Frieda’s Fall”:
- #FriedasFall
- #SwissCinema
- #PeriodDrama
- #HistoricalFilm
- #WomensStories
- #SocialJustice
- #TrueStory
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