Mascha Schilinsky’s superb Sound of Falling is an immersive, fractured reflection on childhood, telling the story of four young girls from different eras.
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by Alexa DalbySound of Falling
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
The constant is a timeline that plays out across a hundred years is a farmhouse in northern Germany, established as home to Erika (Lea Drinda) — perhaps the ’30s or ’40s — who amuses herself by binding her left leg and walking on her Uncle Fritz’s crutches. Fritz, an amputee, is largely bedbound and suffers night terrors, a casualty of the First World War.
From here we flash back to a time when little Alma (Hanna Heckt) lived there with her sisters. Nothing is explained, but from their dress it appears to be the early 20th century, perhaps sometime during or even before the First World War. The mantelpiece is full of photographs of deceased relatives, but one in particular stands out: the body of a little girl, propped up on a sofa with a doll.
The little girl looks like Alma, and her sisters tell her that it is her. But how can that be? While Alma is pondering this, the film shifts to the present day, where Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) and her little sister Nelly (Zoë Baier) live with their parents. The next period is some undefined postwar period where we meet Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky), Erika’s niece.
From here, Schilinsky engages in showing the life cycle of a family home through the eyes of the young girls who lived there.. Memory, like time, is an abstract concept here.
Death is everywhere but what’s real and what’s imagined is left for the viewer to decide. Schilinsky’s film has no music except for one startling song (“Stranger” by Anna Von Hausswolff).
Sound of Falling is an exhilarating experience, frustrating at times, but in the best, most challenging way.
With thanks to Deadline.
Sound of Falling premiered in Cannes, where it won the Jury Prize, and screened at the BFI London Film Festival on 11 October 2025. It was selected as the German entry in the International Oscars.
