Shannon Cotter reports from Cannes, where Mascha Schilinski’s German epic Sound of Falling (In die Sonne Schauen) premiered in the Official Selection. Spanning four generations of a single household, this film steers the director into a whole new league.
Christmas is a celebratory time for most, but for Schilinski, there may have been a little more excitement than usual this year. In 2017, her debut feature Dark Blue Girl premiered at Berlinale. However, last December, Schilinski received an email out of the blue: Sound of Falling was set to premiere as part of the 2025 Official Selection for the Cannes Film Festival. Buoyed by early buzz and joint winner of the Jury Prize with Sirat, in her latest film, Schilinski delivers a gorgeous, expansive tapestry weaving through time to look at familial and female struggle.
Threading through different time periods, the narrative begins chronologically with Alma (Hanna Heckt) and her host of sisters at the turn of the twentieth century, endlessly enchanted with playing games and squabbling. However, within this farmhouse lingers a type of unrest; mystery and foreboding hang in the air. Despite her youth, Alma begins to fear death. She spots things which unsettle her: male servants grasping at the skirts of maids, keyholes which act as windows to unspeakable violence. Most intriguingly, there is a portrait in which the corpse of her deceased sibling lies limp on the couch, a doll beside her and the distorted figure of a woman in the background. She is near identical to Alma. It is instances like these which spark the beginning of more eerie acts as the film continues.
If there is one connecting strand between the differing eras, it is a growing awareness among these female characters of an unknown they are particularly sensitive to. Alternating between post-war Erika (Lea Drinda) in the 1940s, Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky) in the German Democratic Republic of the 1980s, and Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) in our present day, these girls all undergo powerful inner reckonings while coming to grips with harsh realities, be it unrequited love, death or the perils of being a woman.
Schilinski does not give definitive dates or links. Some generations are bound through family while others appear to be completely unrelated. A quick Google scavenge before or after the film might help to determine who belongs when and where, but attentive viewers will be able to put together the overarching parallels, of which there are many.
Sensuality is a running theme through the film, as the protagonists enter into adolescence. Erika forms an attachment to her bedbound uncle Fritz (Martin Rother), Alma’s brother who lost his leg as a teenager. Leap forward a few decades and Angelika is accosted by the unwanted affections of her uncle Uwe (Konstantin Lindhorst), but welcomes the more subtle pining of her cousin Rainer (Florian Geißelmann). It is rarely a Cannes Film Festival programme without one film featuring incest.
Urzendowsky gives the most enigmatic performance of the four leads. Angelika is unabashedly confident, a tomboy yet not afraid of her sexuality. Her uncle overshadows this passage as a malevolent force in her life, in the thick of family matters despite his poorly concealed relationship with Angelika. Yet her connection with Rainer is one of youthful longing. The two play games, running through freshly cut fields with bare feet, mingling until the moon rises. There is such a burst of energy and authenticity between them that you feel that vibrancy which is unique to teenage love – until you remember their circumstances. A son raised to normalise his father’s doings, and his cousin who has been taught to welcome these types of affections. You feel sad for them, but it runs along a much darker thread of what these children have been exposed to, helpless against the passage of time and the mistakes made by the adults before them.
Schilinski provokes a phantasmagorical, ever-changing atmosphere, like flipping through the grainy images of an unknown photo album. You always get the feeling something is off – in the words unsaid and the monologues spoken by the children in poetic voiceovers. This is embellished by the dreamlike images and free-moving camera under the work of cinematographer Fabian Gamper, with colour-graded haze evoking moody blues in the past and the gauzy warmth of summer days post-Alma. Long, uninterrupted shots follow the girls as if a phantom roams this old house, heavy with stories and hauntings.
It is remarkable Schilinski is able to conjure that mystery, which feels it should exist more as an emotion than be allowed a physical representation. Yet she achieves it. There is no doubt that a film like this is made for the age of Pinterest boards and Instagram edits, despite its lengthy runtime and cinephile draw. There are many standout shots: bodies illuminated under sparkling water, a girl levitating among the harvest, and most spectacularly, a wide, moving shot of Rainer and Angelika running in the blue dusk, the moon hanging in the corner like a spectre.
The intertwining of past and future, the visualisations of death, and strange sequences which remain unexplained all contribute to a dreamlike atmosphere reminiscent of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. At one stage, Alma, hiding up the branches of a tree, begins to cry out to her sisters beneath her. They remain unaware, vocalising their confusion as to where she is. It is as if she is a ghost, unable to be seen or heard – yet later, she is rescued by a maid. Was it real? Or another metaphor? Schilinski never gives direct answers, and that’s where the mystery continues to grow, safe for film class analysis in the future.
In the present day, Lenka is coming to terms with her growing affection for neighbour Kaya (Ninel Geiger), who recently lost her mother. Once again, the characters act in an unseemly manner. Lenka’s mother, initially resistant to having Kaya stay over (she tepidly tells Kaya he would need her father’s permission – Kaya puts her indifferent father on speaker within one minute), begins to coax her to sleep as if she were her own child. Lenka has no comment, but just longingly stares.
What pushes these young women into such states of passion, anguish and intrigue is unexplained. Is it a family curse? Is it this old house? Is it the consequence of living in a state with a horrific history? Or is it just the ruminations that come with being a teenage girl?
There can be comparisons made to Sofia Coppola’s exploration of female existence, except this is told in a much more cerebral form. It is as if these girls, even from a young age, are aware of something much deeper and inexplicable than the men around them – and it is their inability to fully grasp this knowledge that leaves them and their world so off balance. Whether this confusion transforms into morbid fascinations or youthful exuberance, only they have the ability to rise above it – or to repeat the same cycle as those before them.
Sound of Falling is a film which requires repeat viewings as much as it deserves them. But with cinematic flair, epic feeling, and boundless images, Schilinski has ensured that will be no plight, but rather a pleasure.
Sound of Falling premiered in Cannes on 14th May 2025.
