“Sound of Falling” is a Masterclass in Generational Echoes of Memories
One could classify 2025 as the year of house-centric cinema. It’s always interesting to see the shared themes that crop up among the various films throughout any given time period. This year, there has been a filmic examination of the role a house plays in a person’s life and the ripples of its walls through time, space, and reality. It’s a theme that shows up in a buzzy award season frontrunner, Sentimental Value, an underseen masterpiece, Sorry, Baby, and in a Jury Prize winner from Cannes, Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling. The film premiered at Cannes in May 2025 and was selected by Germany as their entry for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.
Sound of Falling chronicles the adolescence of four young girls who share the same house, but at different times in history. This is the thesis of Sound of Falling: how do the lives of four young girls, who all grew up in the same house on the same farm in different periods of time, intersect and divide? Alma (Hanna Heckt) lived there shortly before the outbreak of World War I, Erika (Lea Drinda) grew up at the end of World War II, Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky) saw the house in the 1980s, and Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) resides there at the beginning of the 21st century. What unites them is abuse, violence, and assault, as well as fleeting moments of girlhood joys that echo, but not as loudly as the pain.
copyright Fabian Gamper / Studio Zentral
With last year’s three-and-a-half-hour The Brutalist, the Academy Awards began to take measures to ensure that voters actually watch every entry before voting. As a critic and film lover, it’s baffling that people who are voting for what is considered to be the top prize in filmmaking aren’t putting in the time to watch these works by their fellow craftsmen. I mention this because even though Sound of Falling isn’t as long as The Brutalist, it’s a film that, should it be nominated, will test the patience of those voters. Perhaps it’s unfair to the members of the Academy to say that only their patience will be tested, because Sound of Falling will likely be difficult for many to get through. Its subject matter is bleak and the story isn’t presented in a linear fashion. It’s a lofty, swirling piece of filmmaking that can easily make the viewer feel lost. Yet even though the narrative can appear to be purposeless, there’s an undeniable awareness that Schilinski is confidently piloting this ship. As the pieces start to come together, the full weight of the film crushes viewers in a powerful, controlled manner, leaving them pummeled.
copyright Fabian Gamper / Studio Zentral
Thematic DNA is shared between Sound of Falling and Zone of Interest. Both feel voyeuristic in an uncomfortable way, close to the violence but never lingering for long or up-close. The audience can feel it, though, in every frame, in every face. It surrounds them and the characters, but they often aren’t there when it happens. Like The Zone of Interest, Sound of Falling uses the bones of the house to influence the way the camera moves and observes. There are so many instances of characters standing in thresholds, or just beyond them, watching others who don’t know they’re being perceived. What are our actions like when we think we’re alone? How differently do we behave? What can we hide behind closed doors and what do we feel should be observed openly? Sound of Falling’s decisions to conceal moments behind a barrier yet show the audience other scenes is one of the marvelous means of storytelling used by Schilinski and co-writer Louise Peter. Are we more ourselves when we can be seen or when we can’t?
There are times when the girls look in the direction of the camera, as though they know it’s there. It’s haunting. These instances aren’t exactly an example of breaking the fourth wall, but they’re close. Too close for comfort for the viewer, who knows more than the characters. Who knows the pain that is going to be inflicted on these children and how it will echo throughout the house for generations. When these girls look into the camera, it’s as though they can sense the way time expands and contracts in this home. As though they can feel the girls who came before and the ones who will come after, tied together by the walls of a building that’s supposed to provide shelter and safety, but rarely does. At its essence, Sound of Falling is a series of unsettling home videos that span generations. Reflections on the state of world affairs at four different points in time and portraits of families, Sound of Falling is an epic that cannot be contained within the frame of a camera or the confines of a home.
Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Letterboxd, YouTube, & Facebook. Check out Movies with My Dad, a podcast recorded on the car ride home from the movies and I Think You’ll Hate This, a podcast hosted by two friends who rarely agree.
support your local film critic!
~
support your local film critic! ~
Beyond the Cinerama Dome is run by one perpetually tired film critic
and her anxious emotional support chihuahua named Frankie.
Your kind donation means Frankie doesn’t need to get a job…yet.