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.

A few days after the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan in 2021, director Ibrahim Nash’at arrived in Kabul, “with only an Afghan translator and a camera.” Though under constant surveillance, Nash’at had been granted access to follow the day-in day-out of two selected Taliban officials at the newly occupied Hollywoodgate complex in Kabul. 

“I came to see in whose hands this country was left in.” 

It becomes obvious that the Taliban are aware of the power of images, restricting what is allowed to be filmed by Nash’at and what is off-limits. Still, the final edit of Hollywoodgate, resulting from two hundred and twenty hours of raw documentary footage, is far from the propaganda movie the Taliban had envisioned when they first let the man with the camera into the country they claim as their own.  

With all this complexity, Hollywoodgate gives us a glimpse into how the Taliban think and conduct their days, while also revealing the impulsive violence with which they execute their power. It’s a violence that is not only – and not necessarily – loud, but whose destructive power also lies in the quiet moments: in their conversations, their off-hand comments, their laughter, in every action and choice they act upon. 

“I was kept away from the daily suffering of the Afghans, yet I feel it everywhere I go.”

However, Nash’at also wants us to remember that the people in Afghanistan are not only facing the violence of the Taliban but also the abandonment of those that spent the last twenty years making promises of betterment to them. It’s estimated that 7.1 billion dollars worth of advanced equipment was left behind by US forces – from army rifles, to helicopters and fighter jets. 

Their daily suffering is being passed on and transforms; as easily as newly seized AK-47’s are passed on from one pair of hands to the other. 

What we see in Hollywoodgate is just what Nash’at saw:

“The obscene power and the pain that it causes.”

The award-winning movie “Vermiglio” portrays what seems to be an ordinary family life during World War Two and the roles that each family member was confronted with at the time. While the father is educating the members of the village, the mother is busy giving birth to one child after the other. It seems like to grow up as a girl meant to only wait around for your own motherhood. When one of the three daughters feels attracted to the “strange girl” of the village and is confronted with her lust, she feels compelled to develop odd methods of self-punishment.

Queerness, gender norms and the subtle consequences of war disrupt the family dynamics and when a deserting soldier enters the family, their standing in the village takes a turn. As the seasons change from winter to summer, more and more secrets of each family member are revealed and with the end of the war a transformation lies ahead.

The stillness and beauty of nature collide with the harshness of rural life and that contrast is captured through the eye of the director, whose own father grew up in Vermiglio and therefore has personal ties to the village and its story.

A rehabilitated drug-addict, Rona (Saoirse Ronan), moves back into her childhood home on the Orkenay-Islands, after a difficult past in the streets of London. The People are nice, the nature unforgiving, but beautiful. Rona struggles to fit back into the rural landscape. It doesn’t take long for her to realize, that she isn’t fully clean yet.

With her plans of moving back to Londong falling short, she begins to embrace the slow way of living besides farm animals and her religious mother. With a bitter-sweet undertone, direcotr Nora Fingerscheidt manages to craft a compelling, beautiful story of recovery, home and a sense of self.

If you want to laugh, cry and lose yourself in your thought, “The Outrun” is a perfect 118 minute long way to do so.

Are you still joining your family for vacation?
The drama that unfolds between people who know each other so well and yet hurt one another at their most vulnerable is perfectly portrayed in Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut Hot Milk, featuring a stellar cast including Emma Mackey and Fiona Shaw.

When we think of summer vacation, it might evoke feelings of lightness, happiness, and fulfillment , but that’s not the direction Mubi’s newest release takes.

Rose, played by Fiona Shaw, and her daughter Sofia, portrayed by Emma Mackey, travel to the stunning landscape of Andalusia in search of a man who might be able to cure the mother’s illness: a – probably – psychosomatic inability to use her legs. What at first sounds like a functioning relationship, defined by care and support , reveals itself to be a deeply entangled codependency. This story explores a richly layered and emotionally complex bond between a loving but fearful mother and her devoted yet overwhelmed daughter.

Definitely a must watch for this summer!

Set against the vibrant backdrop of South Florida suburbia in the heat of summer, Waves traces the emotionally charged journey of a family pushed to the brink, and shows how love and compassion, in all its forms, in every relationship there is, becomes a force for renewal.

Featuring an astonishing ensemble of award-winning actors and breakouts alike, the movie from writer-director Trey Edward Shults reveals the closeness of love and loss, the importance of communication and vulnerability, even in a dynamic where it would not be expected.

With the most perfect soundtrack for its time, paired with the mesmerizing score of Academy Award-winning duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the movie crashes, churns, and swells with life’s unpredictability – just like the ocean. Waves shows that love can come as the best feeling in the world but also the worst, crashing into our lives with vacillating force in unexpected ways.

Are you in the mood for a French summer? Numéro Berlin has got your back!

“Swimming Pool” by Director François Ozon is a French Thriller that is not only incredibly fun to watch, but also encapsulates the summery feeling of the French countryside perfectly – without feeling cheesy.

To overcome her writer’s block, successful English crime novelist Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) travels to her publisher’s holiday home in France. Her creative phase is disrupted by the unannounced arrival of Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), the 20-year-old daughter of the house’s owner. Sarah begins to see the blonde nymph as a source of inspiration for her upcoming crime novel. But right when things start to settle down a bit, a crime happens, that turns everyones fate on its head.

Buckle up for big feels, warm sun and the occasional surprise.

Celine Song, famous for her directorial work on Past Lives, enchants audiences with her emotionally loaded second theater release Materialists. The screenplay follows Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a highly regarded Match Maker in New York’s dating scene. After successfully marrying 9 people, she sees herself confronted with the first real challenge of her career – her own love life; and subsequently with the decision between her imperfect ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans) and newly met crush and “unicorn” Harry (Pedro Pascal). Unicorn, because of Harry’s flawless, good-mannered appearance. And his money.

What follows is a heartfelt, tragic love-triangle that unfolds before our very eyes. Throughout, Celine Song sprinkles clever parodies on today’s warped dating culture; complete with unrealistic beauty-standards and a jealous ex-partner. To find out how Lucy decides was enough for me, to go see the movie in theaters. And to say the least, I wasn’t disappointed.

Great movies know how to play with one’s emotions. What separates them from average ones, is the way they achieve that. Danny Boyles latest horror-epos, 28 Years Later, is a masterclass in challenging your senses in just the right ways. In just under two hours, writer Alex Garland invites the viewers into a version of Great Britain so immersive and dreadful, that it feels like so much more than your typical horror-movie. Extremely quick cuts, breathtaking, highly experimental visuals and a soundscape I can still feel inside my bones.

The “28”-Franchise has been around for over 23 years. What began as an indie-movie production, filmed with a cheap camcorder and a budget of only 5 million GBP, turned over time into a revolutionary blueprint for modern zombie movies.

In 2002, a highly aggressive rage virus turns Great Britain’s mainland into an uninhabitable, deadly war zone. Zombie-like infected humans roam through big cities and rural countryside alike. 28 Days Later, as well as 28 Weeks later both deal with the first few months after the outbreak. The premise of the third film is a different one though. How did humans the span of almost three decades adapt to their new reality?

The movie follows twelve year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) and his mother Isla (Jodie Comer) on a journey across Great Britain to find a doctor who can treat Isla, who is really ill. No one on the small, protected island they call their home knows, what can be done to make her better again. Spikes father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) doesn’t seem to care much about the well-being of his wive and thus begins a long walk across zombie-infected lands.

The movie feels different than ones from the same genre, through its camera-work, editing and sound design.