A heatwave, one women-only outdoor pool, and a lifeguard who can no longer keep the peace between everyone who claims a right to the water.
What is Freibad about?
Set during a scorching summer at Germany's only outdoor swimming pool reserved for women, the film follows the daily friction among the regulars: some bathe topless, others in bikinis, one-piece suits, or burkinis, each convinced their own comfort defines the rules everyone else should follow. The pool's overworked lifeguard tries to referee these clashes, but the arrangement she is meant to enforce keeps buckling under competing expectations of what the space is for and who it belongs to. Tension rises sharply when a group of fully veiled women arrives and claims the same pool for themselves, unsettling an unspoken hierarchy that had never been written down but was clearly felt. The dispute becomes a stand-in for larger questions the film keeps returning to without lecturing: who gets to decide what a woman's body is allowed to look like in public, and whether a single set of rules can hold that many different answers at once. Worn down by the constant mediation, the lifeguard eventually quits, and her replacement, a man, turns an already fragile balance into something far less predictable.
About the cast
Andrea Sawatzki and Maria Happel anchor the ensemble, with Nilam Farooq, Lisa Wagner, Melodie Wakivuamina, Julia Jendroßek, Sabrina Amali, and Nico Stank rounding out the pool's cast of regulars and staff.
Context & significance
Directed by Doris Dörrie and released in 2022, the film is a German-language comedy that uses a single confined location, a women's outdoor pool, to stage a broader conversation about bodily autonomy, changing communities, and who feels ownership over a public space. Dörrie's long career in German cinema has repeatedly turned everyday settings into settings for social observation, and this film continues that pattern with a lighter, ensemble-comedy touch rather than a heavy dramatic one.
Watching Freibad on Ktime
Freibad streams on K-Time with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, giving Farsi-speaking viewers a choice in how they follow the film's dialogue-heavy scenes. A free K-Time account login is needed to watch, though this page and its FAQs are open to read without signing in, and the platform is built with a Farsi-first interface for the Iranian diaspora.