Stephen McCartyFreud, Freud’s Last Session, a historical drama starring Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode, explores the debate between faith and psychoanalysis, in cinemas from June 14, 2025.
Anthony Hopkins returns in a landmark role with Freud, the Last Confession, a historical drama directed by Matt Brown. Based on the play by Mark St. Germain, the film depicts a fictional encounter between two major figures of the 20th century: Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, and C.S. Lewis, Christian writer and future author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Set in London on the eve of the Second World War, this philosophical huis clos pits two worldviews against each other in an intense, intimate dialogue.
The trailer for Freud, the Last Confession
The face-off between Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode is revealed in the trailer for Freud, the Last Confession, between introspection, faith and reason.
Synopsis: On the eve of the Second World War, Sigmund Freud took refuge in London with his daughter Anna. Weakened by illness, Freud’s interest is rekindled when he discovers that C.S. Lewis, a Christian novelist, has mentioned him in his writings. Their meeting turns into a verbal duel over the question of God, pitting two radically different worldviews against each other.
London, September 3, 1939. World War II has just broken out. Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) has fled Vienna to escape the Nazi regime with his daughter Anna Freud (Liv Lisa Fries). Despite having no scientific training, Anna works as a psychoanalyst and co-founded the field of child psychology. She unconditionally supports her seriously ill father, who is dependent on morphine, while neglecting her own needs, especially her romantic relationship with the psychoanalyst and educator Dorothy Burlingham (Jodi Balfour).
Historically significant
On this historically significant day, the day British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, a scholar from the University of Oxford pays Freud a visit in his exile apartment, Maresfield Gardens, in Hampstead (the Italian production designer Luciana Arrighi has done a wonderful job). He is Belfast-born C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode), who would later achieve worldwide fame with “The Chronicles of Narnia”: Two great thinkers of the 20th century engage in a controversial discourse about love, faith, the future of humanity, and the crucial question for them: Does God exist?
The film’s focus is always on current events, such as Hitler’s announcement of the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe, as heard on the radio, Freud’s childhood experiences with his devout Jewish father and his Catholic nanny, his life in Vienna, and highlights such as the awarding of the Goethe Prize. Last but not least, his rather problematic relationship with his daughter Anna.
Joy in divine creation
And it’s about Lewis’s visions of a forest world, his longing for nature, and his joy in divine creation. But also about his experiences at an institute in England after his mother’s death and his experiences in the trenches of northern France during the First World War: After his best friend Paddy Moore (George Andrew-Clarke) was killed in an explosion, he began a romantic yet complicated relationship with his mother, Janie Moore (Orla Brady), until his conversion to Christianity became an excuse to end it.
But of course, it also deals with more general themes, such as the Oxford literary group ‘The Inklings,’ which, in addition to Lewis, also includes J.R.R. Tolkien (Stephen Campbell Moore). Ultimately, therefore, it’s about past and present, about God and the world. Barely three weeks later, on September 23, 1939, Freud took his own life at the age of 83 due to inoperable jaw cancer: “Death is as unjust as life.”
Highly exciting discourse
“Freud: Beyond Belief” is a fictional meeting of two intellectual minds with a superb trio of protagonists who are a pleasure to listen to, even if you don’t understand every allusion in the highly exciting discourse: Two-time Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins (“The Silence of the Lambs,” “The Remains of the Day”) shines as the avowed atheist Sigmund Freud, while as his ultimately kindred spirit and devout Christian CS Lewis, Matthew Goode (“The Crown,” “Your Juliet”) is once again at his best with minimal gestures and facial expressions. And as Sigmund Freud’s daughter Anna, German actress Liv Lisa Fries (“With Love, Your Hilde,” “Babylon Berlin”) once again demonstrates her broad acting repertoire.
The 108-minute film, directed by Matthew Brown (“The Poetry of the Infinite,” “London Town”), himself the son of a psychiatrist, is based on the play “Freud’s Last Session” by Mark St. Germain, which premiered in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 2009 before enjoying success Off-Broadway in New York in 2010. The playwright and the director adapted it for the screen as a chamber play that complements the intellectual conversation with hallucinatory fantasy sequences and dream images from both their subconscious.
Directed by Matt Brown tensions are played out in words, silences and glances. The film imagines a fictional meeting between Sigmund Freud, played by Anthony Hopkins, and C.S. Lewis(Matthew Goode), in London on the day the United Kingdom entered the war, September 3, 1939.
Carried by dense dialogue and an introspective atmosphere, the story explores the fundamental tensions between faith and reason, science and spirituality, death and intellectual legacy. Although imagined, the confrontation between Freud and Lewis is based on solid historical and philosophical foundations, giving the film a reflective scope that goes far beyond its narrative framework.
These temporal shifts, while illustrative, sometimes detract from the fluidity of the narrative. Their integration lacks naturalness, undermining the balance of the narrative and creating a kind of emotional distance from the audience.
Visually, the film assumes its theatrical origins: fixed shots, tight framing, subdued lighting and a dark color palette. This sobriety, intended to underline the intensity of the debate, can also reinforce the impression of slowness. The atmosphere is heavy, almost claustrophobic, and some critics have complained that the staging is too wise, even austere.
The soundtrack is minimalist, emphasizing the words. A few historical elements – such as radio excerpts of Hitler’s speeches – recall the anxious geopolitical context in which this meeting takes place.
Anthony Hopkins dominates the screen with a nuanced performance: an authoritarian Freud, riddled with doubts, whose physical pain and fear of death make him more human. Matthew Goode, as C.S. Lewis, is more restrained. His character, though central to the idea of the film, remains under-exploited, sometimes overwhelmed by Freud’s stature.
But it’s in a more discreet role that one of the film’s real riches lies: Liv Lisa Fries plays Anna Freud, Sigmund’s only daughter, herself a great psychoanalyst specializing in children. Her seemingly secondary character adds a deep, almost silent emotional dimension. Anna embodies that figure of the intellectually brilliant daughter, but entirely devoted to her father, submissive to his whims and a prisoner of his authority.
The film sketches out, without explaining it outright, the emotional and psychological dependence that bound Anna to Freud. This relationship is as revealing as the theoretical debates, and echoes Freud’s own concepts of transference and sublimation. In counterpoint, C.S. Lewis, who evokes his mother’s bereavement as a point of spiritual rupture, embodies a form of liberation from parental authority.
Anna thus becomes, through her silences and self-effacing gestures, the unconscious reflection of Freud’s contradictions. She hardly ever speaks, but her presence is enough to reveal the intimate, emotional side of the great theorist.
The film raises fundamental questions, without necessarily answering them: is faith a refuge? Is reason enough to console? Does suffering have meaning? Freud and Lewis confront each other without cancelling each other out. The film never makes up its mind, preferring ambiguity to demonstration, in a style that will appeal to those who love the cinema of words and reflection.
Freud, la dernière confession will appeal to fans of verbal jousting, philosophy and psychoanalysis, and to those who appreciate intimate, cerebral theatrical adaptations.
On the other hand, viewers looking for a steady pace, strong dramatic tension or more lively staging are likely to be bored. This film requires concentration and a willingness to listen.
At the crossroads of the intellectual and the intimate, Freud, The Last Confession is a work as sober as it is dense. If it sometimes lacks narrative breath and visual élan, it can captivate through the quality of its performers and the relevance of its interrogations. Behind the monumental figure of Freud, the film succeeds in showing his flaws, his blind spots, and the human echoes of his theories.
Associated Press
Johanna Liander
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Alexis Parker