Sound of Falling

How does history make its presence felt within the bodies and minds of women? Mascha Schilinski’s second feature, winner of the Cannes Jury Prize, is a haunting, dreamlike evocation of pain, abuse, exploitation and neglect across four German generations from World War I to today. 

Fleeting traces indicate the secret traumas of German history: a blurred face in a photograph, an annoying insect, a cry in the night, a sudden, apprehensive feeling about being immersed in water. For the four generations of women in Mascha Schilinski’s sophomore feature, daily life within a farmstead in Altmark is haunted by such cryptic clues. Beyond the immediate horrors of abuse and death, the place itself retains a spectral memory. Pain is not only experienced directly; it is also intuited and dreamed. An all-pervasive network of disturbing social and family relations create a thoroughly morbid ambience, leaving room only for desperate withdrawal into bruised psyches. Refusing a conventional, chronological approach, the film weaves a puzzle with no clear answers.

Cinephiles will find echoes of Bresson, Haneke or Schanelec in this unsettling mosaic of unspoken, passed-down trauma, but Sound of Falling marks the arrival of a new and distinctive directorial vision. A masterfully controlled fusion of dark cinematography, other-worldly sound design and restrained performances, it will linger long in your memory.

– Adrian Martin

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