The Free Will

Theo Stoer, Jürgen Vogel is a frustrated kitchen hand who commits a brutal rape on a young cyclist along the Baltic coast. He is arrested a few hours later. For this crime and two additional rapes, the court orders him to a secure psychiatric institution for court-ordered treatment. After nine years, Theo is released on probation into a supervised shared apartment in Mülheim an der Ruhr.

André Hennicke as Sascha, the probation officer, arranges a job for Theo in a local print shop. To vent his anger, Theo trains hard in strength work and martial arts, and he satisfies his sexual urges by masturbating. In everyday life, he struggles to control himself and to approach people. He notices a waitress at the Pizzeria Trattoria Funghi Anna De Carlo that he finds himself drawn to, but he is too afraid to speak to her. Sascha encourages him to take a chance, and he gradually musters the nerve to try, yet the waitress rebuffs his advances.

One day Nettie, Sabine Timoteo the distraught daughter of the widowed print shop owner, enters Theo’s orbit. Despite initial difficulties, they begin to grow emotionally closer. Before a real relationship can develop, Nettie undertakes an internship at a Belgian praline factory, pulling her away for a time. The probation officer is fired and moves to Berlin, leaving Theo on his own. One evening he comes close to raping a saleswoman in a department store just before closing, secretly following her onto the subway and to her apartment, but he manages to restrain himself and leaves unseen.

Theo makes a surprise visit to Nettie in Belgium. When he cannot locate his hotel room on a rainy night, Nettie invites him into her space, and he quietly shares her bed. The two go to a church where Theo has arranged a surprise: the organ plays as a soprano sings the song Ave Maria, a tune he heard on the radio the night before. The moment marks the deepening of their bond, even as both carry their own scars. The two grow closer, realizing they are both tormented souls: Theo grapples with his lifelong cravings, while Nettie must confront her father’s psychological abuse that has shaped her.

When Nettie returns to Mülheim, Theo moves in with her. Back in Germany, Theo understands that he cannot suppress his urges entirely. On the night Nettie steps out without him, he wanders the streets and rapes another woman. When they return home, Theo tells Nettie about his past and ends their relationship, confessing that he relapsed the night before. She flees to her father for support, and when she returns, the apartment is in disarray and Theo has disappeared.

Nettie seeks out the woman who was raped by Theo nine years earlier. The woman initially suspects Nettie is also a victim and accompanies her to a café, where Nettie confesses she is not a victim but a friend who obtained the rape survivor’s address from a journalist. The woman follows Nettie to the toilet, confronts her aggressively, and abuses her.

Nettie suspects Theo has gone to Sascha in Berlin. She tracks them and secretly observes Theo’s interest in a young woman returning home alone, following her through the crowds of a fair. She loses both of them amid the bustle. Theo then vanishes at the train station, and Nettie follows on a night train toward the seaside. At a hotel bar, she persuades a receptionist to give her a key to Theo’s room “as a friend” and discovers that he had already laid out razor blades in a full bathtub in a suicide bid. She leaves the hotel in shock, then returns to the room to find the water drained and the blades gone.

Nettie locates Theo on the beach at night and is unable to stop him from slitting his wrists in her presence. She holds him as he bleeds to death, a final, irreversible act that seals their intertwined fates. The film lingers on the consequences of their choices, the fragility of control, and the heavy toll of trauma on both sides of a flawed love story.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:33