Cannes Diary 03: Our first Palme d'Or contender "Sound of Falling"

by Elisa Guidici

Mascha Schilinski's Sound of Falling is only the first film in competition but it's already a strong contender for the Palme d'Or, at least according to initial press reactions. These reactions, however, were divided on which directorial comparison best captured the German film's unsettling power and evocative atmosphere. Some critics have invoked Haneke – indeed, it’s hard not to recall The White Ribbon when faced with a narrative that unearths the unknowable, often dark, elements lurking even within children. Others point to Bergman, an almost inevitable comparison given the screenplay's skill in excavating the lives of four generations of women in a German farmhouse. It delves beneath their facade to touch upon a harsh, undiluted humanity where good and evil, innocence and cruelty, inextricably merge and overlap.

My own mind, however, drifted to Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, though Angelika, Erika, Alma, and Lenka represent a far rougher and utterly unsentimental iteration of young womanhood...

Indeed, Sound of Falling elicited a similarly potent and disorienting reaction to Coppola's film at its own 1999 Cannes premiere. The young women in Schilinski's film share spaces—farmhouse rooms, river outings, a cornfield, the main house and barn—and experience similar emotions, yet their timelines rarely intersect.

The connecting thread, little Alma’s story, begins in the Hitler era, when families would do anything to keep their children from the front lines. Then comes the restless Erika and the division of Germany; the bold Angelika and the 1980s, a decade caught between lingering peasant traditions and a new, encroaching darkness; and finally, the present day with Lenka and a strange, magnetic friendship with a local girl, Kaya, in what has become her family’s vacation village. Lenka clings to Kaya, almost painfully susceptible to her charisma.

And yet, these young women somehow seem to perceive one another across time. The four protagonists share a way of suddenly looking into the camera, of fixing their gaze on a distant corner, as if sensing that in the very same location—but in another time—someone like them, perhaps even a relative, has experienced or will experience identical emotions.

Sound of Falling possesses an almost perverse fascination with death, which follows the four women and profoundly touches their lives. In its first half, it deliberately complicates the reconstruction of the story's chronology, the ties between the four girls, and a vast ensemble of family members and extras, all intricately connected. The film flirts with the supernatural, shifting from rigorous, fixed shots to a handheld camera that peers through keyholes and into crevices, capturing dark secrets beyond the facade. Insistent ambient sounds, as if we're in an arthouse horror film, echo a story still unfolding, hinting at the more sinister and truer manifestations of its long lineage.

As the narrative unfolds, never entirely surrendering its mystery, the film reveals its core: an intense, sometimes brutal, look at human relationships through the eyes of young women grappling with their burgeoning emotions and self-discovery.

It's not a supernatural film, nor a horror film, yet it's populated by ghosts who, in the second half, find their voice, foretell their own deaths, and speak of those left behind. Death is more present and alive than the living, conveyed through potent imagery. Real death, immortalized in post-mortem daguerreotypes of Alma’s relatives (a super close-up of a deceased woman's eyes sewn open will surely be among the festival's most striking images), echoes in the astonishment at the first Polaroid the characters take, surprised as the image appears almost by magic. This image seems to prophesy (or perhaps reveal?) a ghostly presence, an imminent disappearance. There is actual death which, despite the title, often manifests as a silent vertical fall. Then there are countless imagined deaths, typical of the morbid adolescent fantasy of picturing one's own demise and the reactions of loved ones. Death, and the physical traces it leaves—the urge to vomit, an amputated leg, a name inherited from a deceased sister—is an almost obsessive, recurring presence in Sound of Falling. It manages to be distressing even when foreshadowed, and devastating when it arrives suddenly, without fanfare.

Mascha Schilinski’s film—shot in 4:3, filmed and edited with a clear intent to highlight the camera’s placement and its commentary on the action—thrives on atmosphere and intense passages. It evokes images like old family photos where something unconfessable and unsettling seems to lurk. The strongest impression recalls certain Allende novels, only darker, and Bergman’s cinema of human revelation. Even the present day feels untethered, as if this viscous atmosphere binds it to the distant past, pulling it out of time.

Overall, my impression was more than positive: this is truly a great film, especially considering the director’s limited prior experience. Schilinski demonstrates a remarkable ability not only to craft magnificent, atmospheric arthouse cinema but also to find the right faces—actors who communicate volumes before even speaking. Sound of Falling leaves something clinging to your skin, a film wrapped around your heart. A definitive judgment, however, might only be possible after a second viewing. It's one of those long, complex films where knowing the plot allows for a more analytical approach, a better grasp of the overall picture. Regardless, it would be a more than deserving presence in the awards lineup.