Sound Of Falling

''Sound of Falling'' () is a 2025 German drama film co-written and directed by Mascha Schilinski. It follows four generations of girls connected by a farm in the Altmark. The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 78th Cannes Film Festival on 14 May 2025, where it won the Jury Prize, and will be theatrically released in Germany by on 11 September 2025.

Premise

The film follows four girls—Alma, Erika, Angelika, and Lenka—from different historical periods whose lives are subtly interconnected. Each spends their youth on the same four-sided farmstead in the Altmark region. As they move through their respective presents, traces of the past gradually emerge.

Cast

* as Alma
* Lena Urzendowsky as Angelika
* Laeni Geiseler as Lenka
* Susanne Wuest as Emma
* Luise Heyer as Christa
* as Erika
* as Rainer
* Greta Krämer as Lia
* as Irm
* Zoë Baier as Nelly
* as Uwe
* as Trudi
* as Max
* as Fritz
** as older Fritz
* as Albat
* as Frieda
* Lucas Prisor as Hannes
* Ninel Geiger as Kaya
* Helena Lüer as Gerti
* Anastasia Cherepakha as Hedda
* as Berta

Production

Development

Co-writers Mascha Schilinski and Louise Peter were inspired to write the film after spending a summer on a farm in the Altmark. After seeing a photo of three women from 1920, Schilinski and Peter began imagining what the women's lives were like.

The screenplay was developed over three years under the working title ''The Doctor Says I'll Be Alright, But I'm Feelin' Blue''. In 2023, it won the by the .

Casting

Over 1,400 girls auditioned for the four main characters. Schilinski stated that the production team searched for girls whose faces could represent the time period of each character. The casting process took place over the course of a year, and the cast comprises both experienced actors and newcomers.

Filming

Principal photography began in August 2023. The film was shot over 34 days in Neulingen and , both in Saxony-Anhalt. For a visual reference, the production team took inspiration from the works of American photography photographer Francesca Woodman. Filming was completed on 2 September 2023.

Release

The film was screened in the Work in Progress section of Les Arcs Film Festival in December 2023. mk2 Films acquired the international sales rights to the film in April 2025. A promotional clip and full trailer were released on 13 May 2025. The film had its world premiere in competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival on 14 May 2025. It was the first film by a German female filmmaker to compete in the main competition of the festival since Maren Ade's ''Toni Erdmann'' in 2016. Following its Cannes premiere, Mubi acquired the distribution rights for the film in North America, the UK, Ireland, Turkey, and India. The film will receive a theatrical release in Germany on 11 September 2025.

Reception

Guy Lodge of ''Variety'' called the film "exquisite" and "astonishingly poised and ambitious". He praised writer-director Mascha Schilinski and co-writer Louise Peter for constructing an intricate story of womanhood through the lens of the four main characters, noting that "no finer point of craft, performance or poetic nuance asrushed or neglected". He also commended Schilinski's direction and Fabian Gamper's cinematography. Damon Wise of ''Deadline'' praised the film, calling it "superb" and "a masterclass in ethereal, unnerving brilliance". He concluded that, "Cinema is too small a word for what this sprawling yet intimate epic achieves in its ethereal, unnerving brilliance; forget Cannes, forget the Competition, forget the whole year, even—''Sound of Falling'' is an all-timer." David Ehrlich of '' IndieWire'' gave the film a grade of A− and wrote, "So tenderly in touch with the shared but unspoken traumas that are visited upon her cast of young women, Schilinski mines tremendous sorrow from the secret poetics of girlhood; she weaponizes cinema's ability to access the deepest interiors of human feeling, and swirls her characters together in a way that tortures them for their subjectivity."

Jordan Mintzer of ''The Hollywood Reporter'' commended the film's unique method of storytelling and wrote, "''Sound of Falling'' is arthouse filmmaking with a capital A that will best appeal to patient audiences. They will be rewarded by a work that reminds us how the cinema can still reinvent itself, as long as there are directors like aschaSchilinski audacious enough to try." Alison Willmore of ''Vulture'' called the film an "astonishing work, twining together the lives of four generations of families with an intricacy and intimacy that feels like an act of psychic transmission", while Wendy Ide of ''Screen Daily'' called it a "work of thrilling ambition" that "announces Schilinski as a talent of considerable note". Peter Bradshaw of ''The Guardian'' rated the film four out of five stars, noting that it was "dense with fear and sadness".

Emma Kiely of ''Collider'', however, gave the film a score of 5 out of 10 and called it "a pretentious romanticization of the hardship women go through rather than an in-depth analysis of how systems and families can sit back and allow such trauma and suffering to claim women's lives". She criticized the underdevelopment of the characters and wrote that "the film is excessively grim to the point that it feels exploitative." Despite this, she commended Schilinski's direction, Gamper's cinematography, and the film's sound design.

Accolades

References

External links

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{{Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize

2020s coming-of-age drama films
2020s German films
2025 drama films
2025 films
Cannes Jury Prize winners
Films about adolescence
Films about child abuse
Films about death
Films about families
Films about incest
Films about servants
Films set in East Germany
Films set in Saxony-Anhalt
Films set in the 1910s
Films set in the 1940s
Films set in the 1980s
Films set in the 2020s
Films set on farms
Films shot in Saxony-Anhalt
German coming-of-age drama films
German-language drama films
German nonlinear narrative films
German psychological drama films