Freud's Last Session

Freud's Last Session is a 2023 drama film starring Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, Jodi Balfour, Jeremy Northam, and Orla Brady. It is based on the stage play of the same name by Mark St. Germain, which itself is based upon the book The Question of God, by Armand Nicholi. The film was directed by Matthew Brown and written by St. Germain.
Freud's Last Session premiered at the 2023 AFI Fest on October 27, 2023. Sony Pictures Classics released the film in a limited release in the United States on 22 December 2023, before expanding wide on 19 January 2024 to mixed reviews from critics.

Plot

A fictional meeting occurs between C. S. Lewis, nicknamed "Jack", and Sigmund Freud, two days after the start of World War II. They debate the existence of God, as Freud greatly resents Lewis's recent rejection of his own strain of atheism in favour of Christianity, and many other subjects. The two men discuss issues such as Lewis's post-traumatic stress disorder as a World War I combat veteran, J. R. R. Tolkien and the Inklings, and the nature of Freud's and Lewis's relationships with other people, such as Freud's daughter Anna, who is codependent upon her father. However, she eventually introduces her lesbian lover, Dorothy Burlingham, to him.
At its close, the film records that Freud died by suicide several weeks later due to the intense pain from his oral cancer; Lewis became a famous author of Christian literature, and the children he took in as evacuees during the war inspired The Chronicles of Narnia; Anna and Dorothy lived together for decades, and Anna became known as the founder of child psychology. The film notes that Freud met with an unidentified Oxford don in the last days of his life, who could possibly have been Lewis.

Cast

WestEnd Films and CAA Media Finance took the project for sales to the Cannes Film Festival in May 2022 with Anthony Hopkins cast, and Matthew Brown on board as director for the St. Germain adaptation. The film is produced by Alan Greisman, Rick Nicita, Meg Thomson and Hannah Leader, with production beginning in the U.K. in late January 2023. However, for financial reasons Freud’s Hampstead house and famous psychoanalyst couch were recreated in Dublin at the Ardmore Studios. A selection of props from the film have since May 2023 been housed at the Freud Museum London. Co-produced by Aoife O’Sullivan and Tristan Orpen Lynch of Subotica Operations, the film received UK Global Screen Fund International Co-production funding. An image from principal photography was released in April 2023 with the film entering the final stages of filming in Ireland.

Release

Freud's Last Session premiered at the 2023 AFI Fest on October 27, 2023. That same month, Sony Pictures Classics purchased the distribution rights for North America, the Middle East, India, Eastern Europe, and Turkey, as well as airlines worldwide; the company would subsequently extend its rights to Latin America and Asia excluding China, Japan and Korea. It had a limited release in the United States on 22 December 2023 and in United Kingdom on 14 June 2024.

Reception

Box office

Freud's Last Session grossed $906,283 in the United States and Canada and $1.8 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $2.7 million.