The sound of falling is unsettling — sudden, inevitable, and hard to ignore. Much like this film, it lingers with a sense of unease and melancholy. Sound of Falling by Mascha Schilinski unfolds across four timelines spanning one hundred years, all connected by a single farm in the Altmark region of Germany. The lives of the people who inhabit this place, with a particular focus on the women, are told through interwoven strands of time and memory.
With striking set design and costumes, the characters are brought to life in their full complexity and uniqueness, evoking a strong yet uneasy sense of nostalgia. The inhabitants are deeply marked by the different eras they happen to live in, while the women in particular must endure the intrusiveness and oppression of the men on the small farm. Camera angles and, at times, unsettling editing amplify the emotions of the different characters, while visual effects like lens flares and sweeping camera movements occasionally overwhelm, while still contributing to the density of the films entangled narrative.

Recurring elements across the different time periods strengthen the sense of interconnection, while also highlighting the weight of inherited trauma that threads through generations.

Already awarded the Jury Prize at Cannes, Sound of Falling stands as a haunting meditation on history, memory and the enduring impact of time.