1984. Fear of nuclear war is on the rise. Frieda, an eleven-year-old dreamer, senses that her parents are hiding something from her. She pushes back against the grown-ups’ lies with the power of her imagination and encounters Aneke – a disowned older sister that she was never allowed to meet. As Aneke enters into Frieda’s reality, a familial order built on generations of silence begins to crumble.

Radically told from the perspective of a child, FRIEDA follows five women from three generations. That which each of them was unable to speak aloud lives on inside the others. The reality of the Cold War becomes infused with Frieda’s magical thinking and her desire for inner and outer healing. Magical Realism and reality merge in a painful narrative about truth, identity and the lost innocence of a generation.

Felix Hassenfratz, born in 1981, is a Cologne-based director and screenwriter. His films explore hidden emotional structures and the fragile boundary between a child’s perception and the reality of the adult world. He studied film directing at the International Film School Cologne. His graduation film, DER VERDACHT, won the German Short Film Award and the Studio Hamburg Young Talent Award, and was screened at numerous festivals. For SCHNITZELJAGD IM HEILIGEN LAND, he received the Grimme Prize in the “Children & Youth” category. In 2019, he was a fellow at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles/USA, where he developed his second feature film, FRIEDA.

Filmography: 2007 DER VERDACHT (short film), 2010 SCHNITZELJAGD IM HEILIGEN LAND (tv series), 2018 VERLORENE, 2026 FRIEDA