DIRECTOR: Mascha Schilinski
STARRING: Lena Urzendowsky, Hanna Heckt, Laeni Geiseler, Lea Drinda, Luise Heyer
RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs 29 minutes
LANGUAGE: German
PLOT: Over the span of a century, four girls from different eras come of age on a German farm, their stories gradually intertwining until the boundaries of time itself begin to blur.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Neulingen, Germany
To check out all previous submissions for Germany, click HERE.
STARRING: Lena Urzendowsky, Hanna Heckt, Laeni Geiseler, Lea Drinda, Luise Heyer
RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs 29 minutes
LANGUAGE: German
PLOT: Over the span of a century, four girls from different eras come of age on a German farm, their stories gradually intertwining until the boundaries of time itself begin to blur.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Neulingen, Germany
To check out all previous submissions for Germany, click HERE.
FILM REVIEW:
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Funny how something can hurt that's no longer there."
In Sound of Falling, German director Mascha Schilinski creates a haunting, impressionistic portrait of pain passed down through generations. Set on a rural farm in Saxony-Anhalt, the film traces the lives of four girls, each living in a different era across a century, whose stories quietly intertwine through shared spaces and unspoken suffering. Schilinski’s nonlinear storytelling transforms time into an echo chamber, where memories reverberate like faint whispers across decades. Each girl becomes both a mirror and a shadow of the others, embodying the cyclical nature of trauma that silently shapes family histories and female identity.
Visually and sonically, Sound of Falling is a masterclass in atmosphere. The camera lingers on the fragile beauty of the German countryside, its fading barns, trembling fields, and moments of eerie stillness, as if nature itself absorbs the pain the characters cannot articulate. Dialogue is sparse, replaced by the hum of wind, the murmur of insects, or the distant tolling of bells. Through this soundscape, Schilinski evokes the invisible weight of mental illness and despair, particularly in how it isolates each woman even within the same ancestral home. Suicide, though rarely shown, lingers as a recurring presence, a ghostly trace in the film’s rhythm, a silence too heavy to name.
Each of the four women bears the residue of the one before her. Their gestures repeat, their fears overlap, and their small acts of defiance, whether tending to animals, bathing in a river, or simply standing in sunlight, become attempts to reclaim control over bodies and emotions shaped by inherited pain. Schilinski doesn’t present trauma as spectacle; she renders it as texture, something woven into the fabric of everyday life. The women’s fight to get better is subtle but profound, existing in moments of tenderness, fleeting laughter, and fragile resilience. Healing, the film suggests, is not linear, it’s cyclical, fragile, and often unfinished.
Sound of Falling reveals that real trauma is not visible. It cannot be photographed or dramatized, it’s felt, transmitted, and heard in echoes, resonating across generations like an unending hum beneath the surface of life. Schilinski’s film is less about what we see than what we sense: the quiet persistence of pain, and the faint, enduring hope that each generation might suffer a little less than the one before.
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Funny how something can hurt that's no longer there."
In Sound of Falling, German director Mascha Schilinski creates a haunting, impressionistic portrait of pain passed down through generations. Set on a rural farm in Saxony-Anhalt, the film traces the lives of four girls, each living in a different era across a century, whose stories quietly intertwine through shared spaces and unspoken suffering. Schilinski’s nonlinear storytelling transforms time into an echo chamber, where memories reverberate like faint whispers across decades. Each girl becomes both a mirror and a shadow of the others, embodying the cyclical nature of trauma that silently shapes family histories and female identity.
Visually and sonically, Sound of Falling is a masterclass in atmosphere. The camera lingers on the fragile beauty of the German countryside, its fading barns, trembling fields, and moments of eerie stillness, as if nature itself absorbs the pain the characters cannot articulate. Dialogue is sparse, replaced by the hum of wind, the murmur of insects, or the distant tolling of bells. Through this soundscape, Schilinski evokes the invisible weight of mental illness and despair, particularly in how it isolates each woman even within the same ancestral home. Suicide, though rarely shown, lingers as a recurring presence, a ghostly trace in the film’s rhythm, a silence too heavy to name.
Each of the four women bears the residue of the one before her. Their gestures repeat, their fears overlap, and their small acts of defiance, whether tending to animals, bathing in a river, or simply standing in sunlight, become attempts to reclaim control over bodies and emotions shaped by inherited pain. Schilinski doesn’t present trauma as spectacle; she renders it as texture, something woven into the fabric of everyday life. The women’s fight to get better is subtle but profound, existing in moments of tenderness, fleeting laughter, and fragile resilience. Healing, the film suggests, is not linear, it’s cyclical, fragile, and often unfinished.
Sound of Falling reveals that real trauma is not visible. It cannot be photographed or dramatized, it’s felt, transmitted, and heard in echoes, resonating across generations like an unending hum beneath the surface of life. Schilinski’s film is less about what we see than what we sense: the quiet persistence of pain, and the faint, enduring hope that each generation might suffer a little less than the one before.
