Dir: Mascha Schilinski. Germany. 2025. 148,
“Suffering, sighing, bleeding, dying; sealed in a stone cold tomb”. The trauma of four generations of German women is captured in this macabre patchwork portrait of life in a farm in Eastern Germany. Secrets are embedded in the walls of this lugubrious family home only to seep out onto the next generation and poison their wellbeing, like black mould. Silent and deadly. Grimms’ fairy tales spring to mind.
Mascha Schilinski’s second feature touches on grief, confusion and anxiety. Accepting without understanding the mysteries and tragedies that befall a family is at the core of this thrilling but often enigmatic work that eschews a structured narrative and instead leaves the viewer to piece together the story and make sense of how each character relates to the others across the years from the mid 19th century until the present day.
An accident at work that leads to a gruesome amputation; an inexplicable death; a little boy in a coffin; strange unexplained ailments, and even infertility, are left to Alma, the youngest girl, to fathom out. A sepia photo of a ghostly mother looking down on a blond child dressed in black boots and bombazine. She died suddenly. They share the same name. So will little Alma (Hanna Heckt) die too by the end of the summer? She awaits her fate in trepidation and morbid fear. No-one tells her what happened.
Those of us with Victorian great-grandparents will relate to these often grim-faced photos. And to the haunting questions that hang over children – and were entirely relatable, until today when parents are more ‘friends’ who explain everything, rather than figures of authority. We may recall events that remain etched to our own memories and surface decades later. They often remain an enigma, haunting us as we too grow into adulthood.
There are funny times to in The Sound of Falling, but these are few and far between:. Alma and her siblings nail the maid’s clogs to the floor so she falls flat on her face. Women were forced to accept casual acts of misogyny. Fast forwarding to the 1980s Angelika (Lena Unrzendowsky) is faced with the unwanted demands of her uncle Uwe (Konstantin Lyndhurst). When a new family buys the farm, the heaviness of the haunted past is as difficult to erase as the stains on the wallpaper.
Schilinski’s TV series Cologne PD is well-known in Germany. Her 2017 debut Dark Blue Girl was another relatable modern day story about a perplexed child that won a few prizes for this visionary new arthouse director. @MeredithTaylor
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2025