In conversation with "Sound of Falling"'s Evelyn Rack

Voting for the Oscar shortlists is ongoing, including in the Best International Film category. Here's Eurocheese talking with Evelyn Rack, the extraordinary editor of Germany's Sound of Falling...

SOUND OF FALLING (2025) Mascha Schilinski | © MUBI

(Please note - this interview contains SPOILERS in you haven't seen the film.)

EUROCHEESE: Congratulations on Sound of Falling. I was able to catch it at AFI fest this year – it was my favorite film at the festival. It such a unique viewing experience – so different from anything that I've seen in a long time, and I'm really excited to get to talk to you about it today. First of all, I just wanted to find out a little bit about how the project came to you. 

EVELYN RACK: The producer Maren Schmitt approached me – we had worked on other projects before and she told me listen Eva, I have this amazing script from this awesome director; you have to come on board, I know you're the right one. So she sent me the script, I opened it, and on the first page before anything else there was a quote from Bresson: “I'd rather have people feel a film before understanding it.” My heart skipped a beat because I feel like it's exactly my editing approach on every film that I edit, that I seek to really feel a film rather than understanding it...

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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...

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Cannes at Home: We're Back!

by Cláudio Alves

Could SOUND OF FALLING be the first German film to win the Palme since THE WHITE RIBBON?

As the title says, we're back! Well, I'm back, to be precise. Apologies for my absence in the last few weeks, but I've been busy, here in Portugal, covering the IndieLisboa Film Festival. Indeed, I might still write something about the many great works I caught there for The Film Experience readership. But, in the meantime, my attention shall be on Cannes and batting away the cinephile FOMO that befalls those of us who're staying home, watching from afar as some of the year's most anticipated films make their bow at the Croisette. Nick Taylor is doing some anniversary posting while Elisa Giudici is reporting from the festivities, so I'll be doing my usual schtick and explore past works from this edition's Official Competition auteurs. 

A few days of competition screenings have passed. Still, it all started with German director Mascha Schilinski's Sound of Falling, which received sterling reviews from international critics and is already considered a contender for end-of-the-festival honors. Sergei Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors marks a more unheralded return to fiction from the Ukrainian filmmaker. Let's look at their triumphs from years past…

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